charge: the future of energy

DIESEL A GO GO

2006-12-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

My blog is moving to Alternate Fuels World

A MOST REMARKABLE ALT FUEL VEHICLE

As I suggested in an earlier piece on the alternative fuels and vehicle show held recently this month in Santa Monica, most such vehicles exhibit a singular lack of attitude and panache. Alt fuel connotes austerity, sacrifice, less-is-more. Alt fuel vehicles are earnest and well meaning, but frankly not much fun, and bespeak the latent Puritanism always waiting to resurface in American culture.

I would suggest that this is a bit of a problem in marketing terms. Why would I want to buy a hairshirt of a vehicle with cramped dimensions, a stodgy appearance, and sluggish performance? Depending upon my own moral bearings and political values, I might feel that such a purchase is dutiful, even necessary, but it would scarcely be undertaken with much enthusiasm.

Recently I discovered an alternative fuel vehicle, or at least one that is alternative fuel ready, that goes distinctly against the grain in this regard and which represents remarkably fresh thinking not only as how to build an exciting and yet avowedly green ride, but how to build a market for it.

The company engaged in this venture is Neander Motors, located in Germany, and the product is a diesel powered motorcycle which yet lacks a model designation. The engine, which is of modern high pressure common rail design, appears entirely capable of utilizing biodiesel in 100% concentrations.

So what did the Neander team do right?

First of all, they designed the whole thing from the ground up to achieve certain performance as well as aesthetic objectives. Second, they positioned the bike within the appropriate motorcycle subcategory, one where low volume production bikes from startup manufacturers have succeeded in the past at elevated sticker prices. Third, they conceived the bike, first and foremost, as an enthusiast product rather than a PC statement.

By all means visit the Website at www.neander-motors.com. It is detailed and informative, though, God knows, the navigation could be much better designed. It is well worth enduring the slow loading and poor organization of text. Here I’ll simply summarize the most salient characteristics of a really well conceived product, and provide a bit of background.

The Neander fits generally within the class of bikes which motorcycle journals have dubbed “bruiser cruisers”, heavy, very large displacement steeds intended primarily for touring, but with exemplary straight line performance and some pretensions to handling. Examples of the breed would include most Victory motorcycles, the Kawasaki Vulcan 2000, the new Triumph Rocket III, the Yamaha Roadliner, and the Honda Rune. Most of these brutes have engines capable of powering small automobiles and dry weights exceeding 650 pounds. None save the Neander has a diesel engines.

Diesels—and this is news to most Americans—have come a very long way over the course of the last few years. They still stink—there’s no way of eliminating that liability unless one uses biodiesel—but they now compare favorably in power output per cubic centimeter to gasoline engines. The power curve is somewhat different, emphasizing low end torque over top end brio, but most drivers probably won’t notice the difference, or, if they do, they’ll appreciate it. In other words, the diesel engine is currently at a state of development where it might at least be considered for use in a two wheeler.

Still, there are problems, including intense vibration in two cylinder embodiments, somewhat heavier duty moving parts to cope with the very high compression ratios, and generally higher noise levels.

The Neander guys—dare we call them Neanderthals—looked at the problems as challenges. They utilize dual counter-rotating crankshafts to cancel vibrations—an ingenious first—and turbocharging to coax more horsepower out of the two cylinder mill. They also developed a mechanical arrangement that reduces side loading on the cylinders and permits lighter duty parts to be used. Finally, they utilize the engine as a part of the frame which reduces the overall weight of the vehicle. In sum, they have produced a highly innovative, through-engineered power plant that produces 100 horsepower from 1,400 cubic centimeters of displacement. In contrast, the Yamaha Roadliner’s very high output gasoline engine cranks out a mere 92 horsepower from 1850cc. and much less torque.

The Neander is a long wheel base bike, typical of the breed, but at less than 650lbs is the lightest of the class. Handling of pre-production prototypes is said to be exemplary.

Within the bruiser cruiser grouping styling is important, so much so that a large proportion of the bikes sold are subsequently customized. Cosmetics, of course, is a matter of taste, but most would agree that both the mass production Roadliner and the semi-custom Rune are masterpieces of industrial design, and are instant collectibles. The Neander is at least their equal in visual charisma, and, while recalling certain classics from the past such as the old Harley Powerglide, is yet entirely contemporary and strikingly well balanced in its lines and volumes.

At this point no one can say for certain if Neander will succeed in the market. We would anticipate that at low production volumes it will reach these shores with at least a 25k price tag, more than ten thousand dollars more than most of the competition. Honda has sold out its production on the similarly expensive Rune, but then Honda put all of its resources behind the Rune and hired a crack team of American customizers to make the Rune the slickest production motorcycle on the planet. Neander will have to achieve at least equal quality control and to demonstrate superior all around performance.

At the very least, I think they’ve entered the right market. Newcomers Victory and Boss Hog have both succeeded in this class, and indeed Victory is intent on pursuing wider markets with innovative designs that in effect establish their own niches. No automotive startup could hope to achieve similar success.

If Neander succeeds it will convey a very clear message to the marketplace—you have to be better, not just cleaner. My guess is that they will succeed and that the message will be heard.

I would conclude by noting that Neander’s primary intention is not to be a motorcycle manufacturer and their bike is primarily intended to promote their engines. The engines themselves, which have extraordinarily high outputs for four stroke designs, are intended for use as outboard and inboard marine motors, in all terrain vehicles, in automobiles, and in small aircraft.

Santa Monica Alt Fuel Vehicle Show

2006-12-21T16:32:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

This past weekend Yvonne and I attended the Alternative Car and Transportation Expo held in a converted aircraft hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. Granted, this was not the most auspicious venue for the event, but attendance appeared to be fairly good, in spite of both the obscure location and the limited parking in the area. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times estimated that some 10,000 persons came to look at the more than 100 exhibits. The show, the first of what one may assume will be an annual event.

For more about the show, go to: http://www.alternatefuelsworld.com

A New WEBSITE

2006-12-06T11:21:00.001-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy:

We welcome you to visit our new website:
www.alternatefuelsworld.com
We will be exploring developments in fuel technologies that we believe may change our future.
Please drop by and share your comments.

A New WEBSITE

2006-12-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

PEAK OIL PEOPLE MEET

2006-11-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
BY Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

ASPO MEETING

ASPO (the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas) concluded its annual meeting in Boston a week ago and, in contradistinction to many professional societies, published all of the conference notes on their Website. Good for them. Information on issues of such importance should be made widely available in any working democracy.

Obviously, anyone presenting papers at such an event is preaching to the choir. If one didn’t think peak oil were a problem, one presumably would not be in attendance. We haven’t read every word of every paper, but we did skim the lot of them, and we don’t recall anyone bothering to advance new data on the subject. Rather the attitude seems to be that the problem is clear so now palliatives if not solutions must be advanced.

Meanwhile, we’ve been seeing a flurry of announcements from various peak oil debunkers that do purport to show new evidence. One such document, whose provenance we have unfortunately forgotten, made the astounding statement that some 11 trillion barrels of crude reside on the Arabian Peninsula, or approximately twenty times the high estimates of the past. Certainly, this figure was not part of any official ARAMCO announcement, Saudi oil reserves are a well kept state secrete, but recently an ARAMCO official claimed that Saudi reserves alone would ensure 140 more years of business as usual. Then of course there is George W. Bush’s appointment of an ex-Exxon-Mobil CEO to head a study on peak oil, an individual who is also a fervent debunker.

The predictable result of all of this is a further flood of articles in the mainstream business press dismissing peak oil in the same way that much of the business press has dismissed global climate change. What is not so predictable is the effect of a concerted infinite oil campaign.

Peak oil is much less in the news than global warming, though both problems are urgent. And, in the case of global warming, as a matter of interest, the coverage evokes little sense of urgency.

Global warming in the collective consciousness assumes the form of a disaster movie—ice shelves plunging into the sea in spectacular geysers of spume, floods in the Andaman Islands and various other godforsaken places where the plumbing doesn’t work, and droughts somewhere in the Horn of Africa wherever the hell that is. Nobody but a few tree huggers expects that anything bad will happen in the U.S. It’s kind of like globalization. It will be good for us but bad for some guy in Somalia, but what the hey?

What we’re saying is that while most people accept the existence of global warming, they’re not particularly frightened by it. Indeed, it was scarcely an issue in the midterm elections.

Peak oil is different. We’ve never seen a poll as to the number of Americans who accept the validity of the concept, and we’ve heard very few politicians discuss the implications of dwindling oil reserves in any detail. The exception is Bill Clinton since he’s been out of office, but the guy never talked about it when he was in office and in a position to do something about it. Instead you get a lot of platitudes about oil independence and kicking our oil addiction, but the back story behind that narrative is that oil dependence is a problem because Islamo fascists own the stuff, not because it may be running out altogether.

Of course, if peaking is imminent, then it is difficult to conceive of how even the privileged United States can escape economic travails. Maybe that’s why politicians avoid the topic. It’s simply a downer. There’s no audacity of hope, no upbeat movie of the week when it comes to peak oil. Or even a good disaster movie. Making do with less never makes for a very good political narrative. Remember the seventies? Small is beautiful…. No, it’s not. Supersize me, Jack, because I be living large.

But, back to the conference papers. The ASPO guys are mostly scientists and scholars and not necessarily all that Green. Nobody, for instance, was offering the hydrogen economy based on renewable energy as a solution. You’d probably be laughed off the podium if you trotted out that tired scenario today. Almost everyone thought that hydrocarbon liquid fuels would be the mainstay of the transportation energy for decades to come—in other words, for the foreseeable future—and few saw ethanol or biodiesel production playing any major role in the mitigation of the effects of peaking. So that means petroleum analogs from unconventional natural gas, from oil shale, from coal, and possibly from some concentrated forms of biomass, though few thought that biofuels could assume anything close to a dominant position in the mix.

Estimates on how much liquid fuel could be derived from unconventional fossil resources varied, with some running as high 25 million barrels a day in 20 years, but most much lower. Everyone agreed that capital investments in the trillions of dollars would be required to initiate a transition to unconventional sources, and that a crash program would extend for decades. No one discussed what business as usual involved if the confident predictions of ARAMCO and Exxon-Mobil prove misguided or just plain deceptive.

Which brings us to a final point. Do the peak oil debunkers have a hidden agenda? Is the object to discourage a transition to new energy resources so demand for oil and the price it commands will both ascend precipately? To attempt such a ploy would be audacious. To pull it off would be something approaching madness. Could one pull it off? Could one lobby unconventional energy sources out of existence, profiteer from peak oil, and then deflect the certain wrath of the public as all manner of economic catastrophes were visited upon it? And would the remainder of the business community go along with an energy policy that only enriched oil companies while creating dire problems for everyone else with the exception of bankruptcy lawyers?

We don’t know. If, as Sean Hannity had confidently predicted, the Republican Party had picked up several dozen Congressional seats in the recent election, we might have believed that any political capitulation to a well endowed industry, however inimical to the public interest, would be possible. Presented with a choice between a candidate offering a flag burning amendment and one promoting a sane energy policy, what right thinking person could possibly support the latter?

But such was not the case. Fear based appeals to the reptile brain found the reptile for the most part dormant. That’s not to say it can’t be roused again, and that the public can’t ultimately be gulled into accepting a policy of business as usual in regard to energy in the face of worsening oil shortages.

We shall see.

Who's in Charge?

2006-10-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

WHERE WE’RE GOING IS WHERE WE’VE BEEN
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

This week Samuel Bodman’s, George Bush’s Energy Secretary, chose Lee Raymond to head a group developing national energy policy initiatives. In view of Bush’s recent statements in support of alternative fuels and curbing oil imports, this is a rather remarkable appointment.

Raymond is the former president and CEO of Exxon-Mobil who during his tenure at the oil giant funded pseudo-scientific research purporting to disprove the existence of global warming and scoffed at the notion of lessening foreign oil dependence through the promotion of alternative energy sources. Exxon-Mobil has been virtually alone among the biggest international petroleum companies in its failure to diversify into alternative energy in one form or another, and also has been unusual in its stated insistence that global climate change studies are “junk science”.

Exxon-Mobil under Raymond’s leadership also issued statements to the effect that current conventional oil reserves total in excess of 3.1 trillion barrels, almost double the median number cited by leading oil analysts, and suggested that oil producers would increase production to over 50% above current levels. Exxon also dismissed the conventional wisdom to the effect that almost all oil producers have already passed the peak of production. Scores of countries would be boosting production in the future according to Exxon’s top management.

Obviously Exxon’s, and, by extension, Raymond’s position is consistent. If oil really is superabundant and likely to flow out of the ground in ever more copious cascades then why bother with alternative energy, especially if CO2 emissions really are no problem? Of course one could place a less charitable construction on the expression of these notions and infer that Exxon’s intention were to try to stifle renewables so that energy consumers were left with no choice but ever more expensive petroleum products, but that would be churlish even to suggest. Indeed in the Texas of Spindletop days one might be challenged to a duel or horsewhipped or otherwise ill used for contesting the statements of an industry stalwart and perhaps even today these are dangerous inferences to make.

One is reminded here of Dick Cheney’s secret energy meetings during the Bush Administration’s first term and one begins to understand the need for secrecy then and now. After all, individuals lacking in subtlety might suspect that some deep disharmony underlies George Bush’s assertions of energy independence and his appointment of a petroleum satrap heretofore committed to ever increasing growth in oil consumption. How does one square that circle?

We don’t pretend to know.

If Raymond and Exxon-Mobil are right on all counts—global warming and peak oil are both junk science and business as usual can go on indefinitely—then this is an excellent appointment, but then why not be more forthright? Why doesn’t George W. Bush simply state that lessening dependence on foreign oil is rank foolishness, and then strike all funding for alternative energy research from the D.O.E. budget? Why make any concessions at all to Greens and doomsayers and enviro whack jobs? Solidify the base, for God’s sake, and keep on message.

Still, we cannot refrain from speculating on the possibility of some fundamental discrepancy between Exxon-Mobil’s professed position and their own internal deliberations. What if they actually believe otherwise, that oil is running out and that global warming is real but let’s not say so because that’s bad for business?

That leads to further speculation. What is the plan if oil reaches $150 a barrel in ten years and the Greenland ice sheet melts and the U.S. is embroiled in two or three Middle Eastern conflicts simultaneously. How does one avoid appearing wrong oneself, and how does one deflect the anger of the citizenry elsewhere. That would require extreme adroitness at public relations jujitsu.

Homosexuals are always good scapegoats, but how does one blame them for an oil shortage? They don’t consume petroleum jelly in those quantities. Ah, we have it…. During the sixth century when homosexuality was declared a crime under the Code of Justinian the reasoning was that homosexual acts induced earthquakes! The precise causal relationship eludes us, but it seemed rather obvious to the jurists of that period. If Gays can produce such profound geophysical effects in the form of temblors, then mightn’t they disturb oil fields as well? Maybe that’s a stretch I think it represents the kind of out of the box thinking that will be required.

Anyway, President Bush is to be congratulated on a fine appointment. We’re sure that the conclusions of this new energy policy committee will soon be made available on a need-to-know basis.

HUPPERT'S PEAK?

2006-10-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
HUBBERT’S PEAK OR BUST
BY Daniel C. Sweeney

Last week in certain business publications such as Barron’s and Forbes one read suggestions that cheap gas was coming and would be here to stay. $1.25 per gallon for the next twenty years was one prediction. I mention this because I was in the midst of interviewing vendors for an upcoming ethanol and fuel alcohol report and one of my sources brought it up. “If it’s true we’re f_cking toast!” the source remarked.

He’s right of course. If really low prices come back and stay back, the alternative fuels industry is probably going to collapse. Some people will continue to buy biodiesel because they’re “green”, while ethanol might find a place as an octane booster, but that will be it. Otherwise it will be business as usual. And who knows, after a couple of more Republican administrations, leaded gasoline might come back.

Actually, these predictions are nothing new. Exxon-Mobil has been strenuously urging against the U.S. investing in alternative energy because with more than 3 trillion barrels of crude waiting to be pumped (their projection), we certainly don’t need it. In fact it would be a gross misallocation of resources and a big government boondoggle. Of course this is the same company that airily dismisses global warming as junk science, but to some minds that puts them firmly on the side of the angels.

We’ve been here before. Back in Carter era—that age of confusion that brought us stagflation, the Disco Duck, cocaine, and less is more—alternative energy advocates briefly proliferated then quickly got their comeuppance come Reagan’s “morning in America” with its cheap gas, junk bonds, and hostile takeovers. Everyone drove gas guzzlers to the Predator’s Ball, and the alt energy guy looked like a prize horse’s ass.

Buck twenty-five gas, I thought when I read the business stories, many of which suggested that such a happy state of affairs could only occur if all branches of government remained in Republican hands. What if they’re true? That would make me a prize horse’s ass as well for trying to start an alternative fuels journal.

Does that mean I should pray for high oil prices? That’s kind of like praying for jihadist victory in Iraq to support my position that the whole thing was a ghastly mistake. No one in good conscience can hope for either outcome, even though one believes that either or both might occur.

What I like to say in such circumstances is that I strive to determine what will happen, not what should happen. Bad news can be good news if you use it to avoid certain catastrophe.

So what are we to make of this? Is cheap oil really on the way?

I have avoided much discussion of peak oil in this blog simply because so much has been written on the subject and because I don’t believe I have much in the way of original insights to offer. I happen to believe that the age of cheap energy is passing, but I don’t necessarily believe that the world or the United States will hit a wall. All kinds of expedients are possible involving biomass conversion, enhanced oil recovery, extensive exploitation of unconventional fossil fuel, nuclear energy, and radically different transport systems. In other words, Homo sap needn’t merely engage in business as usual until the point where it’s no longer possible and then endure the collapse of civilization.

Having said all this, I would bring up one fact in regard to oil that almost no one disputes. The rate of oil discovery has been declining smoothly and sinusoidally since about 1970. We are already way, way down on the bell shaped curve, and all of the new seismic imaging and enhanced recovery technologies haven’t made any real difference. That means that if Hubbert is right about a 40 year lag between the peak of discovery and the peak of recovery, we can expect a decline of conventional supplies to begin about 2010 which happens to be near to the median figure for peaking among petroleum experts.

Exxon-Mobil’s figures are approximately three times higher than the low estimates for proven reserves and they’re much higher than anyone else’s. Exxon could be right or they could be disingenuous. There’s no knowing.

What can be said is that ethanol stocks have been hammered on the basis of such news and the first wave of fear is advancing through the alternative fuels contingent. The fear is particularly pronounced among the older players with a living memory of the Carter years. If the industry collapses again it is unlikely to be revived unless and until a scarcity of conventional oil reaches a crisis point and maybe not even then.

What an irony it would be if oil prices briefly declined to say $20 per barrel and stayed there for a couple of years and then shot up to $100 and did not decline thereafter. Investors, having taken one bath on renewables would not take another no matter how bad the oil crunch got, and consumer’s would have no choice but to pay as much as the market demanded with what effects upon the economy one can scarcely imagine.

Robert Samuelson, a Nobel prize winning economist, recently wrote a piece in which he maintained that ascending oil prices have been harmless because industrial productivity has been rising much faster in the U.S., thus ensuring prosperity for the future. No one else is arguing double digit productivity increases but then who’s going to argue with a Nobel laureate. Not the kid. So not to worry. We’re impervious to oil spikes. And if that’s really true, we don’t need alternative fuels no matter how bad it gets. We’ll just get more productive. Come to think of it, I must have been a horse’s ass all along. There never was a problem and there never will be.

HONDA THROWS A BOMBSHELL

2006-09-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

HONDA THROWS A BOMBSHELL
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD
This week Honda showed two prototype vehicles, one a car with a diesel engine that meets California emissions requirements and the other their latest fuel cell car. They also announced they’d be making Flex Fuel vehicles at some unspecified time in the future.

So what’s it all mean? With Honda and Toyota enjoying banner years while American firms lie on the verge of bankruptcy, you don’t take Honda announcements lightly if you’re sane. The American auto industry, simply put, isn’t driving change any more. The Japanese are.

Here’s our take.

The fuel cell announcement can be pretty much dismissed. Honda claims these are production vehicles, but the company also says they’re intended for pilot implementations in government fleets. That’s not production in our estimation, it’s just business as usual—fuel cells are the technology of the future and they always will be.

Flex Fuel is a bit different, and is basically a signal to the industry. What Honda is saying is we can respond to an E-85 push at a moment’s notice, we’ve already done the engineering. And that’s fairly important because surprisingly few auto manufacturers have openly embraced E-85.

The diesel announcement is really the kicker though. Japanese manufacturers have been relatively inactive in developing diesel engines for personal vehicles in the past, and that’s because their largest markets have been in the U.S. and in the Far East where diesel isn’t popular. Most of the recent exemplary work on improving diesels has been undertaken by European companies like Peugeot and Volkswagen because there primary markets are in Europe where fully half the cars use diesel today. For Honda to announce suddenly that they’ll be making a range of diesel engines and selling them in the United States is frankly pretty startling.

What to make of it?

Diesel represents hard times and permanent shortages. Diesel engines beat the hell out of gas engines in terms of efficiency and they always will. When efficiency becomes really, really important, so does diesel.

But how important will efficiency be in the future? The theme song in the mainstream press is that cheap oil is back to stay. We don’t believe it for a minute though. We think it’s the Bush Administration jawboning the oil industry, and by mid November if not sooner prices should be on the rise again. That’s assuming that the Administration does not begin a war with Iran, of course, a distinct possibility if Republican prospects at the polls remain dim. If that happens prices could and probably will take off. The Administration’s only option then would be to dump the entirety of the Federal strategic oil reserves on the market—an incredibly reckless action, but then so is a war with Iran.

Anyway, we think the days of cheap oil are past, and we think Honda knows it. And, in that light, diesel is an interesting option. Contemporary compression ignition engine designs are streets ahead of the clunkers we saw twenty years ago, and have performance characteristics and noise levels comparable with spark ignition engines along with vastly superior efficiency. Of course, Americans don’t know that. All they know is the prior art and it will take a hell of marketing effort to convince them that diesels are different today.

Honda, however, has a generous advertising budget, and they may just turn the trick. And if they combine the diesel with hybrid drive and continuously variable transmission, two of their other flagship technologies, they could make cars approaching 100 miles per gallon.

We have one real problem with diesel however. Cleaning it up to meet emerging standards requires a ton of hydro-treating and hydrogen is getting more and more expensive due to pressure on natural gas suppliers. Diesel engines can provide a big increment in efficiency but the cost of diesel is apt to rise faster than the cost of gasoline simply due to the hydrogen requirement. Nor is it all that easy for a refinery to change it product balance. Someone set up to produce a certain percentage of diesel and a certain percentage of gasoline can’t alter the balance significantly without incurring sizable expenses.

Compression ignition engines can of course run on biodiesel, but we don’t see that industry expanding sufficiently to cope with enormous demand.

The other answer could be synfuel. Quite a bit of diesel is already made from natural gas in Qatar and if stranded and/or unconventional resources elsewhere in the world can be tapped in a really major way a copious supply of diesel could be made available. And best of all you’d be getting really clean fuel that wouldn’t require a lot of hydro-treating.

The other possibility is coal based synfuel which is also extremely clean, though coal itself isn’t, but we don’t see such fuels coming on the market in the midterm in any quantities. Sasol in South Africa is the only major coal synfuel manufacturer active today, and though pilot projects are planned for China, they won’t change the equation any time soon for Honda or others pushing high performance diesels.

In the longer term, di-methyl ether from coal could constitute a very abundant, relatively low cost, ultra-low pollution fuel for compression ignition engines, but we are not at all certain that DME will figure even in fleet applications over the course of the next five years. In short, there is no obvious relief from soaring fuel prices in the offing, unless the optimists are right and cheap oil returns for good.

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON SYNFUEL

2006-09-08T17:04:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

In past posts I have suggested that coal derived synfuels would likely play a major part in our transportation future. A couple of recent interviews with a couple of executives at Dakota Gasification, Inc. have caused me to reconsider.

Dakota Gasification operates one of the few commercial coal gasification facilities in the United States, perhaps the only one. And that gives them unique experience and insights.

Before I relate what was told to me, a little background is in order. Coal gasification has gotten a considerable degree of attention of late. The coal industry sees it as a technology to advocate if not to adopt because it has the potential to make “clean coal” a reality rather than just a slogan. Certain energy pundits like coal gasification because proven processes exist for converting coal derived syngas into various liquid fuels including diesel fuel, kerosene, gasoline, methanol, ethanol, and DME, and because coal resources are fairly immense. Parties dependent upon natural gas as a feedstock for chemical manufacturing, such as the ammonia and methanol industries, are very interested as well. And obviously folks making gasifiers and other conversion equipment are pretty bullish on the technology. And, just as obviously, the fact that U.S. coal reserves are so immense argues strongly for coal gasification as way to reduce or eliminate dependence upon foreign oil. The further fact that cheap, low grade lignite coal works splendidly in gasifiers is a bonus.

So why, I have repeatedly wondered, isn’t it happening? Why is there only one small commercial plant operating in the U.S. and few anywhere else? Now I think I know.

First a brief explanation of what gasification is in terms of the basic chemistry. A number of coal gasification technologies are extant today but the usual process, called partial oxidation, involves heating pulverized coal in the presence of oxygen or air to the point where the coal forms a gas but prior to combustion. The resulting gas, which is known as synthesis gas or syngas, contains hydrogen, carbon monoxide, a little carbon dioxide, and various contaminants whose presence will depend upon the composition of the individual coal feedstock.

Syngas may be used as an intermediate feedstock to make all sorts of chemicals including methane, methanol, ethanol, and analogs of petroleum fuels. Syngas can also be used directly as a fuel in turbines for generating electricity. Incidentally, syngas can also be produced from biomass, but that’s another story and the economics for that are questionable today.

Syngas happens to be the same stuff used in gaslights back in the Victorian era and a bit beyond. At one time it was used for cooking, heating, and even for fueling early internal combustion engines. Now it’s poised to make a comeback.

Or so it would seem.

Anyway, I asked the folks at Dakota if they had any plans to produce any kind of liquid fuel, either alcohol or petroleum-like synfuels, from coal derived syngas. No, was the answer. How about anyone else in North America? The answer there was more ambiguous.

As is well known today, Sasol in South Africa has been profitably operating coal-to- liquids plants for decades, although most of the liquid fuels used South Africa are still petroleum products. And Dakota management, as it turns out, are in almost constant communication with Sasol. They don’t think the Sasol model is necessarily very relevant in the U.S., however, because the Sasol experiment was initially government subsidized. Dakota officials believe that the private sector simply won’t assume the risk of building coal to liquids plants in the U.S. because the probable capital investment will be in the billions of dollars per plant installation for commercial scale production facilities capable of competing with conventional refineries on the basis of cost.

The other question, of course, is could such a plant operate profitably today if investment were forthcoming, and could a multitude of such plants reduce are reliance on foreign oil?

Given the importance of this question, one might assume that there have been many rigorous studies on the subject, but that turns out not to be the case. I have found only two studies, one performed by Princeton University, and the other by Mitretek, a heavyweight scientific and engineering research corporation that does a lot of work for the Defense Department.

Both studies are based almost entirely upon models and projections. Apart from the Sasol plants, there just aren’t enough gasification facilities in operation to provide the basis for an empirical study.

So what are the findings? When we’re somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 a barrel for crude—and that’s basement rather than the ceiling price—gasification starts to look good.

So gasification, here we go. Or do we? I keep thinking back on the remarks made by the Dakota guys. Princeton and Mitretek didn’t study their plant, but they’re in business and they’re making money. The thing is that they own their own coal mine, but they don’t think they can sell liquid fuels profitably, only methane produced from coal plus a few syngas derivatives which essentially are petrochemicals.

The other thing that makes me nervous is the whole idea of models. Frankly, I don’t trust them. A few years ago I saw innumerable models and projections for the hydrogen transition coming out of various think tanks and industry groups and government agencies and it was all smoke and wishful thinking. And of course we’re seeing the same thing in other areas of alternative fuels—oil shale, cellulosic ethanol, and coal bed methane. If one is to believe the proponents of any of the above, $30 per barrel is achievable now and our energy problems are on the verge being solved.

Projections made by proponents of any given fuel feedstock or processing technology must be assumed to be wildly optimistic until proven otherwise. My guess is that few if any of the alternative liquid fuels prove out until oil nears $100 per barrel. Which is probably coming, but when?

And when it does, one faces the further question of what alternative fuel is the most favorably placed, and, remember, cheaper always trumps cleaner. If shale oil comes to $30 a barrel, which I’m not saying it necessarily will, and everything else is a lot more, then what happens to everything else?

Of course any petroleum-like synfuel, and that’s really what shale oil is, will simply be dumped into the world petroleum market, and unless the oil shale fields suddenly come into full bore production that cheaply produced substitute won’t make much difference. Oil shale producers will sell at the world price and make more profit than the conventional oil guy, but the price of gasoline won’t come down by very much if at all. Only an alternative fuel which is truly alternative, i.e. is not part of the current petroleum distribution network can undersell oil, and course the petroleum producers would attempt to protect their markets in any way they could and keep that alternative from becoming mainstream.

If oil prices can be maintained at extremely elevated levels, synfuels from oil shale, unconventional natural gas, and from coal could probably all survive in the market, with the different producers experiencing varying profit margins according to the cost effectiveness of their feedstocks and their manufacturing processes. But investors will tend to gravitate toward the alternative fuel with the highest profit margin. If that proves to be oil shale, oil shale will get most of the money. If it’s synfuel from coal, then coal gets the outside investment.

At any rate, I am extremely doubtful that any of the alternative fuel manufacturers including the ethanol guys will ever be able to flood the market with cheap product and bring the per BTU prices crashing down. The oil manufacturers could do that in the old days because they could modulate the production of the oil fields very quickly. You can’t do that with a synfuel plant or an ethanol plant, at least not very easily. They usually operate at near peak capacity and they’re not pulling the feedstock out of the ground with a pump.

We may be able to gain a measure of energy security through crash alt fuels programs, but we need to stop telling ourselves that cheap fuel is coming back. Maybe someday decades from now that will happen, but it’s almost inconceivable with current technology or any conceivable enhancements thereof. From now on every drop of refined fuel is precious.

* * *

We note with regret the untimely passing of Steve Irwin, whom we think was the most effective voice the environmental movement ever had. Combining irrepressible enthusiasm, an endearing stage presence, endless amusing antics, and almost ironically, an encyclopedic knowledge of zoology, he did much to communicate his passions to the world at large and to educate millions on the wonder and fragility of our natural realm.

ELECTORAL FRAUD -2006

2006-08-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

Electoral Fraud - 2006

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of blogs is that one is free to say whatever one wishes—to rhapsodize if one has the talent or inspiration for it or to make a complete and utter ass of oneself. Obviously, the latter outcome is far, far more prevalent, but no matter. There’s no ferment without unappetizing byproducts.

That said, I am departing from the editorial “we” and doing something I generally abhor, making an overtly political statement in a journal devoted primarily to science and technology.

One may glean from scattered comments over months of postings that I am less than enamored with the current Administration, a disposition which currently puts me in a two thirds majority, so nothing remarkable there. I am, I should mention, a registered Democrat of rather conservative economic views. I like free markets and I distrust managed economies. Incidentally, I see no such devotion to a rigorous market based approach to economic problems in the Bush administration. And I see no fiscal responsibility whatsoever.

So to the point.

An election is in the offing which is of great moment to the future of the United States. Practically all major polls show the Republican party losing Congress if voter distaste for the party remains at current levels. This opposition poses a pervasive hazard to the leadership of the Republican Right on many levels and extending far beyond the simple loss of seats.

The Bush Administration has been aggrandizing power with signing statements indicative of a fundamental rejection of system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution, and also by the institutionalized repudiation of due process in the form of the PATRIOT act. Obviously, a multitude of actions on the part of this Administration are of highly questionable legality, and a Democratic majority would be sure to act to check the Administration sharply.

If this were to occur, it would likely lead to a Constitutional crisis. George Bush, to all indications, is a remarkably stubborn, obdurate, and imperious individual, one who would respond to legal obstacles with actions of yet more questionable legality. And with many of his supporters facing investigations by Congressional committees should the Democrats take the House, the Republican Party would probably close ranks behind him. Some sort of muted coup is not out of the question.

I do not envision a banana republic storming of the Capitol. The military would be likely to abstain from such a course, though they might be ultimately summoned to “restore order” should mass opposition materialize. Rather, increasingly arbitrary actions would be undertaken by the Administration, and dissenters might be harassed, threatened, or even arrested. Indeed, threats have already been made against the New York Times already. They could be carried out. Similar threats have been made good elsewhere in scores of other countries.

I do not believe, however, that any sizable contingent on the Right wants a coup. A coup, however limited, would be a sally into uncharted territory and the consequences of a failure could be terrible. They could be literally fatal.

A more likely course has been suggested by reporters in the employ of Salon and Rolling Stone in recently published articles—a massive campaign of electoral fraud that could deliver a Republican miracle in November. Simultaneously, the Administration could initiate a military action that could be used to justify a crackdown on dissent, and the two course of action are highly synergistic in fact.

Rolling Stone is what it is, but regardless of its air of frivolity, it makes a practice of hiring highly skilled, aggressive journalists. Salon is centrist, nonconfrontational, and much more concerned with picking up life style and cultural trends than in attacking the Administration. That Salon would front page accusations of this nature is, to say the least, disquieting.

Alas, Salon’s accusations are not unfounded. There is little question that Republican operatives were guilty of grave electoral misconduct in the past, particularly in Florida and Ohio. Salon identifies six states where similar abuses are likely to occur in the next election. Whether such irregularities tipped either election to Bush, I’m not prepared to say, but I continue to harbor suspicions, and those suspicions have grown. I believe that voting fraud, a full bore smear campaign utilizing to the fullest the media outlets sympathetic to the Administration, and an October Surprise of some sort or other may very well be adequate to ensure the permanent majority envisioned by the disgraced Tom DeLay.

In the event of such an outcome, expect major media networks to insist fraud is nonexistent or else perpetrated by the Democratic Party. Those who object will be dismissed as “tinfoil hat types” or accused of treasonous disloyalty in a time of war. The violence of the rhetoric will exceed anything seen previously.

The United States in the aftermath of such an event would not suddenly transform itself into some semblance of the Third Reich. A better model would be the flawed quasi-democracy of Mexico where accusations of pervasive electoral fraud have been extant for decades.

Under such a system we could go on with our lives, pursue happiness, and continue to enjoy an elevated if endangered standard of living.

The problem with such an outcome is that it could not be hidden, however. If the Republicans enter the races ten points down and that shows up in the exit poles, and yet they still win by two or three or five points, the two thirds majority of Bush rejectionists will remain suspicious, and building a society on the permanent suppression of a majority is dangerous and probably ultimately untenable. Network anchors could insist that all is well or simply ignore objections altogether, but ultimately their own credibility is at stake. I am not suggesting that Web based journalists in any way constitute a counterpoise—their cavils will only reach their own dedicated readerships, but a deep and abiding cynicism will begin to overtake the American polity. And it will be exacerbated by the corruption that inevitably accompanies the ascent of unaccountable governments.

What to do?

If this dire outcome occurs, everyone who as an ounce respect for the venerable political tradition of this place must converge on Washington on the days after the election. You will have this chance once in your life and there is no excuse including the death of a loved one or your own job security not to attend. Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter can’t ignore accusations of fraud if three million visitors converge on Washington. And no, the Armed Forces won’t fire on peaceful demonstrators even if Bush gives the order.

Many of you who feel as I do are affluent professionals, and in some cases, extremely wealthy. Wear your two thousand dollar suit, show respect, and behave as ladies and gentlemen, and don’t allow the lying shills that increasingly populate the mainstream media to marginalize you.

I’ll be there if I have to hitchhike. You be there too. You must be. And spread the word, make this viral.

Goodbye and God bless.

ALTERNATIVE FUELS AND TECHNOLOGY LOCK-Ins

2006-08-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

ALTERNATIVE FUELS AND TECHNOLOGY LOCK-Ins

BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PhD

We’ve been here before. Back in the nineties when concerns about global warming and dependence on foreign oil first began to assume some urgency, much of the energy and transportation industries as well as the U.S. government and various policy consortia representing European governments made a collective decision to support hydrogen as the fuel of the future and fuel cells as the energy conversion device of the future. Now, after the billions of dollars spent in research that has borne startlingly little fruit, hydrogen appears to be receding to be replaced—it would seem—by ethanol. The power brokers, economic and political have spoken.

It’s easy to see why ethanol would have a strong constituency, or, rather constituencies because the support for this product is diverse. Lots of people are already making lots of money off ethanol, and its use as a fuel additive is already well established. Furthermore, the logistics of a transition to an all ethanol or largely ethanol future seem far less problematic than is the case for hydrogen. Existing internal combustion engines can be easily modified to run off pure ethanol mixtures—there’s no requirement to substitute fuel injectors or redesign cylinder heads as is the case with hydrogen—and storage presents far fewer problems, though ethanol cannot be transported through oil pipes nor stored in tanks intended for gasoline or crude oil. And, of course, the technology for producing ethanol is well established, while at the same time subject to continuing improvements in efficiencies and cost effectiveness.

There are other arguments, as well, some fairly persuasive, at least at first hearing. Ethanol will revitalize the farm belt, the American heartland, as it were, will create new jobs and will stimulate the atrophying hard manufacturing sector of the American economy. Then there’s the carbon neutral argument which is just a bit disingenuous in respect to current production techniques but which always sounds encouraging.

So why not ethanol?

The economics of ethanol are indisputably better than those for hydrogen which had zero emissions going for it and absolutely nothing else. The hydrogen economy was like human life extension. It was an idea everyone could warm too, but which couldn’t be implemented with current technology, and very possibly, not with any technology that would exist in the next quarter century. Ethanol is much less of a stretch, and indeed was extensively used as a fuel at the beginning of the automotive age in the early twentieth century when the extent of oil resources was largely unknown and automobile manufacturers, in many cases, were unwilling to predicate their businesses on the uncertainties of future oil supplies.

So why not ethanol? What are the obstacles and problems that could derail this latest world energy initiative.

As in the case of hydrogen, we find the degree to which energy incumbents and other industrial constituencies as well as governments themselves are committing to ethanol disquieting. As with the hydrogen, the whole idea is to preserve the economic status quo as much as possible. Let the major automobiles switch to flex fuel. Let the largest chemical companies finance ethanol plants. And let the oil companies distribute the product. All very sane, orderly, and rational, and all very contrary to the way in which energy revolutions have proceeded in the past. Maybe there’s no way that entrepreneurship and sheer market forces can make a revolution anymore, but we’re not quite ready to believe that yet.

We don’t think that bureaucracies, whether corporate or governmental, manage revolutions very well. And a major reason that they don’t is that they pursue a course of trials, pilots, and “rational planning” that results in technology lock-ins, that is, commitments to failed technologies long after their failures have become apparent—witness the case of automotive fuel cells which now, it appears, are never going to happen.

One thing we’re seeing in the many government and academic reports we’ve been reading on alternative fuels is an insistence that manufacturing processes can’t scale downward, that ethanol or other alternative plants have to be immense to be profitable. We’re not convinced that this is true, even at present, and we’re absolutely convinced that designing for immense production volumes is absolutely the wrong way to launch an industry. Those with a real faith in alternative fuels need to start small, need to identify niches, and need to forget pilots and proof of concept. After all, most of the early aviators never wore parachutes.

Ethanol may in fact be the best choice available to supplement refined petroleum products, but we’re not absolutely convinced of that. The only way to manufacture ethanol that is cost competitive with petroleum at present is to use cane juice, and the restriction of cane to tropical regions means that that method can never meet the needs of the global transportation industry. Ethanol can also be made from grains, coal, natural gas, and from forestry and agricultural wastes—so called cellulosic ethanol—but the economics for these other methods are unproven except for the case of grain. Cellulosic ethanol has been mightily hyped, but it is debatable as to whether any of the technologies for producing it are fully mature. Many studies indicate that cellulosic ethanol carries much higher capital and operational expenses than grain ethanol although the feedstock of course is cheaper.

Liquid fuels that are chemically very close to petroleum based gasoline and diesel and are based on unconventional fossil fuel feedstocks and/or biomass can be manufactured by many different processes, including pyrolysis, gasification, plasma treatment, steam reforming, hydro-thermal upgrading, anaerobic digestion, and other completely proprietary techniques and some of these rivals may offer better economics than cellulosic ethanol. But the money is going to ethanol, and we may be facing a technology lock-in if the investment continues without a serious debate.

Thank God, the lock-in never occurred with hydrogen. It eventually became obvious that the economics were unfavorable, and the stream of investment began to dwindle. What was left was a bunch of pilot hydrogen fueling stations but no extensive infrastructure. But with ethanol the cost of production today is sufficiently lower that a heavy reliance may be established, followed by a crisis as the economics fail to prove out.

While we hesitate to suggest policy initiatives, we believe that whatever liquid fuel proves most feasible, the usage of liquid fuel, especially in transportation must decline precipitately. More reliance has to be placed on stored electricity in personal vehicles, and innovative forms of rapid transit have to be initiated on a fairly wide scale. Such measures would give the industrial world a fighting chance while truly sustainable energy technologies are perfected—and, incidentally, we don’t believe that simply building a million wind turbine constitutes any permanent fix for our energy needs.

That sane measures will be taken cannot be assumed, however. They generally haven’t been in the past when societies have faced resource crises. Rather the tendency is to pursue ultimately destructive practices for short term gain until the society collapses. Clive Ponting’s brilliant “A Green History of the World” is a comprehensive historical examination of resource depletion in every region of the world, and it suggests that go-for-broke rather than save-for-the-future is norm for our species. Anyway, we anticipate an interesting decade ahead in the liquid fuels business.

Hotter than HOT

2006-07-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
CONTEMPLATING THE GRID
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

Living in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, one perforce endures inclement summers. For the past ten years they have been increasingly inclement—not quite reaching the Palm Springs or Phoenix level of inclemency but still mightily oppressive. On the 23rd of July the Valley registered 119 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature not experienced in this region since the 130 degree heat wave of the 1850s.

Predictably, the power grid could not meet the extraordinary demands for electrical current to drive air conditioners, and many power plants shut down, unable to maintain safe distribution voltage levels. In other cases, however, service interruptions were not deliberate but were the result of thermal failures in distribution power transformers. High current levels combined with elevated air temperatures and extraordinarily intense sunlight conduced to dangerous overheating of the transformers and a breakdown of the insulation layers. In many cases the transformer cases literally exploded.

This got us thinking about an innovation that was developed in Russia over a decade ago and has been subject to surprisingly few commercialization efforts, and here we’re talking about the ultraconductor.

Ultraconductors may be considered distant kin to superconductors. They were originally developed for use in experimental Russian tokamak fusion reactors where prodigious values of current are made to circulate in order to create the intense magnetic fields necessary to contain the plasma where the controlled fusion reactions take place. Cryogenic superconductors have generally been used to form the coils of the reactor to prevent uncontrollable heat buildups from ohmic losses, but the high costs of refrigeration and the energy losses involved in providing it have always constituted a major disadvantage.

In Russia as in other highly developed industrial nations, much effort has been expended to create a room temperature, or failing that, very high temperature superconductor, but to no avail. But the ultraconductor, almost unknown prior to 1990, proved an acceptable substitute.

Ultraconductors have extremely low but not zero resistance and they exhibit this property at normal temperatures. They do not exhibit the peculiar magnetic properties of true superconductors and on this basis may be deemed less useful, but by the mere fact of offering resistance levels orders of magnitude lower than silver they all but eliminate the thermal problems that plague all electrical elements including transformers, motors, transistors, and transmission cables.

Had ultraconductors been in use in our distribution transformers, they wouldn’t have failed. Had they been in use in the generators, they could have been driven harder without fear of overheating. Of course, commercial ultraconductors would exert far more transformational effects than simply improving grid reliability. They would also go a long way toward solving thermal problems in all kinds of electrical devices and would permit the construction of extremely compact high powered motors and generators. They would also improve the efficiency of the entire electrical system and result in huge energy savings that could at least partially offset the steep rises we have seen for natural gas.

In the past two companies have claimed to have developed ultraconductors with commercial potential, Ultraconductors, Inc. and WindFire Energy, the latter now defunct. Ultraconductors management claim that much additional financing is required to go forward. The company is involved in other ventures of a largely undisclosed nature which sound suspiciously similar to the so-called “over unity” schemes which are the province of all manner of cranks and mountebanks, and the presence of obscurantist technical discussions on the Ultraconductors Website, while perhaps necessary to protect intellectual property, cannot be making it easier to secure funding for a technology that is represented in the scientific literature of peer reviewed journals.

We would hope that other researchers would investigate ultraconductors because it doesn’t appear that room temperature superconductors are anywhere in the offing. Meanwhile, American Superconductor, an entirely legitimate manufacturer, is attempting to sell cryogenic superconducting transmission cables to public utilities, and finding few takers.

Hotter than HOT

2006-07-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C.Sweeney, PhD

CONTEMPLATING THE GRID

Living in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, one perforce endures inclement summers. For the past ten years they have been increasingly inclement—not quite reaching the Palm Springs or Phoenix level of inclemency but still mightily oppressive. On the 23rd of July the Valley registered 119 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature not experienced in this region since the 130 degree heat wave of the 1850s.

Predictably, the power grid could not meet the extraordinary demands for electrical current to drive air conditioners, and many power plants shut down, unable to maintain safe distribution voltage levels. In other cases, however, service interruptions were not deliberate but were the result of thermal failures in distribution power transformers. High current levels combined with elevated air temperatures and extraordinarily intense sunlight conduced to dangerous overheating of the transformers and a breakdown of the insulation layers. In many cases the transformer cases literally exploded.

This got us thinking about an innovation that was developed in Russia over a decade ago and has been subject to surprisingly few commercialization efforts, and here we’re talking about the ultraconductor.

Ultraconductors may be considered distant kin to superconductors. They were originally developed for use in experimental Russian tokamak fusion reactors where prodigious values of current are made to circulate in order to create the intense magnetic fields necessary to contain the plasma where the controlled fusion reactions take place. Cryogenic superconductors have generally been used to form the coils of the reactor to prevent uncontrollable heat buildups from ohmic losses, but the high costs of refrigeration and the energy losses involved in providing it have always constituted a major disadvantage.

In Russia as in other highly developed industrial nations, much effort has been expended to create a room temperature, or failing that, very high temperature superconductor, but to no avail. But the ultraconductor, almost unknown prior to 1990, proved an acceptable substitute.

Ultraconductors have extremely low but not zero resistance and they exhibit this property at normal temperatures. They do not exhibit the peculiar magnetic properties of true superconductors and on this basis may be deemed less useful, but by the mere fact of offering resistance levels orders of magnitude lower than silver they all but eliminate the thermal problems that plague all electrical elements including transformers, motors, transistors, and transmission cables.

Had ultraconductors been in use in our distribution transformers, they wouldn’t have failed. Had they been in use in the generators, they could have been driven harder without fear of overheating. Of course, commercial ultraconductors would exert far more transformational effects than simply improving grid reliability. They would also go a long way toward solving thermal problems in all kinds of electrical devices and would permit the construction of extremely compact high powered motors and generators. They would also improve the efficiency of the entire electrical system and result in huge energy savings that could at least partially offset the steep rises we have seen for natural gas.

In the past two companies have claimed to have developed ultraconductors with commercial potential, Ultraconductors, Inc. and WindFire Energy, the latter now defunct. Ultraconductors management claim that much additional financing is required to go forward. The company is involved in other ventures of a largely undisclosed nature which sound suspiciously similar to the so-called “over unity” schemes which are the province of all manner of cranks and mountebanks, and the presence of obscurantist technical discussions on the Ultraconductors Website, while perhaps necessary to protect intellectual property, cannot be making it easier to secure funding for a technology that is represented in the scientific literature of peer reviewed journals.

We would hope that other researchers would investigate ultraconductors because it doesn’t appear that room temperature superconductors are anywhere in the offing. Meanwhile, American Superconductor, an entirely legitimate manufacturer, is attempting to sell cryogenic superconducting transmission cables to public utilities, and finding few takers.

ALTERNATIVE FUELS

2006-07-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
ALTERNATIVE FUELS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

ALT FUELS

Having completed our hydrogen study and thrust it upon a largely indifferent marketplace, we are now contemplating a study of so called alternative fuels, though we have not fully committed to the project as yet. Hydrogen apparently is so 2002, no longer fascinating to investors, hence the tepid reception given our report. Indeed, we heard a recent interview with Amory Lovins, hydrogen’s biggest proponent heretofore, and he was talking about cellulosic ethanol from switch grass, a palliative also endorsed by President Bush. There is apparently some sort of harmonic convergence going on here, if we can resurrect a term from the wonderful lost decade of the nineties when it was very heaven to be alive.

At any rate, alternative fuels are now the rage and shall remain so for some considerable span of time, just as food is the rage of a starving man—or at least until he finally starves to death. Of course one could argue that people could simply become reconciled to high petroleum prices and forget about alternatives, and indeed we are being enjoined to follow such a course by certain figures on the political right, but so long as petroleum prices continue to inch up such forgetfulness becomes extremely unlikely. One may become reconciled to a high price if that price remains stable, but if it is continually ascending then fresh irritants manifest themselves at every turn.

Alt Fuel and Objectivity

As with many other issues relating to energy and energy security, more heat than light is evident in most discussions we have read on the subject of alternative fuels. And this is because ideology colors all such discussions.

Here we cannot resist an illustrative anecdote.

We were attending graduate school when the first oil crisis occurred—this in the year of grace, 1973. That crisis was entirely political in its origin and arose from the conflict between Israel and several Arab states known as the Yom Kippur War. Oil production in the Middle East was cut back in an attempt to persuade the U.S. to slacken in its support for Israel, but fortunately Egypt and Israel, the principal combatants, were both desirous of peace and the crisis was quickly resolved. At the time, however, no one knew that a swift resolution was in the offing, and there was much speculation concerning future interruptions and ongoing shortages in petroleum.

We vividly recall a conversation on this subject with one of our fellow graduate students, an individual who was already enjoying great success in landing research grants and seemed destined for academic stardom.

Now this person might be said to have anticipated James Howard Kunstler, a widely quoted and self appointed energy pundit, in that he held to a species of neo-agrarian vision where in the face of an ongoing energy shortage the masses would return to working the land; although in contradistinction to Kunstler he foresaw the toiling masses being mired in a condition of serfdom, while a small aristocracy continued to enjoy the high consumption lifestyle of the twentieth century.

“People like you,” he said referring to myself and to similar low born oafs, “will remain on collectives performing backbreaking work in the fields while people like me jet over to Europe to study on Ford Foundation grants.” He smiled at the thought of this, himself exalted, myself abased. Upon hearing this, I obligingly tugged my forelock, broke wind as peasants are wont to do, and shuffled off to begin the hard scrabble existence that awaited me.

Of course not all neo-agrarians favor a return to feudalism as did my classmate. Some are utopian environmentalists or collectivists who believe that a sharp reduction in energy usage will conduce to social leveling, on the one hand, and sustainable use of natural resources on the other, though in fact most traditional societies have tended to overexploit the resources available to them. But, in any case, an implied socio-political ideology generally lies behind any position on energy. And this is because energy plays such a major role in determining the nature of any given society. High energy societies are wealthy societies—no exceptions. They can use that wealth to foster high standards of living, as have many Western democracies, or to support imperialist expansion as did Japan prior to 1945. Or they can do both by turns as did the U.S. in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But in all cases, energy is destiny.

Topics and Issues

We define alternative fuels as any combustibles apart from conventional fossil fuels. That’s a large universe of substances.

Within this large universe the fuels themselves may be categorized according to either the foodstocks from which they are derived or the chemical composition of the derivatives.

Now this makes for considerable confusion, because one can derive fuels of similar chemical compositions from widely varying feedstocks. One can, for example, derive methanol, ethanol, diesel, and gasoline from coal. One can also process agricultural wastes to produce biodiesel, ethanol, diesel, and gasoline. And in turn one also produce a wide array of finished fuel products from natural gas, landfill gas, paper pulp waste products, recycled plastics, meat byproducts, manure, algae—the list is almost endless. Furthermore, there are a multitude of chemical reactions as well as processing equipment which one can utilize to produce fuels for motive power and heating for each individual type of feedstock. In short, there is no single successor technology for supplementing or replacing conventional fossil fuels.

What we find interesting, and we shall return to this topic in future postings, is that, as in the case of hydrogen, both the investment community and government agencies have already made choices which may not make economic sense. Biodiesel and ethanol, the favored alternative fuels at present, may not represent the best options for containing fuel costs, reducing greenhouse gases, or reducing dependence upon imported oil. And yet this is where the funding both public and private sector is going.

Of course missteps in respect to energy policy have been made before. Nuclear energy has proven far less cost competitive than originally envisioned, and is thought by many to represent a serious misallocation of resources, though one could argue that as various fossil fuel resources are depleted the nuclear option becomes more attractive. Still, no one can maintain today that fission reactors are the panacea that they were seen as being fifty years ago.

But if nuclear power was a misstep, it was a misstep that has not been productive of the most dire consequences to date, however intense the opposition to the technology in some quarters. True, there remain knotty issues of waste disposal, but few seriously believe that economic crisis impends due to the now diminished activities of the nuclear industry.

But in the case of combustible fuels for transportation and stationary power a misstep culminating in an uneconomical product would mean that the citizenry at large would be thrust back into an utter dependency on increasingly costly traditional fossil fuels, at least until a new technology for alternative fuel could be funded and perfected. Which seems to us altogether more serious.

Naturallly, we are assuming that steadily rising fuel costs would not be without economic consequences, but we must report that there is contingent of conservative economists prepared to argue otherwise. Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel laureate, recently wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek in which he opined that rapid continuing increases in industrial productivity in the U.S. were far outstripping increases in oil and natural gas prices and would assure us of a bright future irrespective of future oil crises. So take that, Mr. James Howard Kunstler. We don’t have to worry about going back to the land when those rivers of oil dwindle to rivulets. Industry will be so productive that we will all be as rich as Croesus and well able to afford $20 a gallon for low test, and the hell with the rest of the world which lacks Yankee ingenuity and won’t be able to increase productivity as quickly if at all. Thus I won’t have to perform backbreaking labor on a hard scrabble farm while the fortunate few study in Florence.

At least I hope not.

WAR OF THE WORLD VIEWS

2006-06-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

In the past we worked for a highly controversial journal covering an area that, to the uninitiated, would seem to be devoid of controversy, namely consumer stereophonic high fidelity systems. The name of the book was The Absolute Sound and its editor was one Harry Pearson.

Mr. Pearson, like many great editors, and he was a great editor, combined considerable literary gifts with a bilious nature and tendency toward vituperative outbursts. He once told us that he valued writers for their ability to provoke controversy, genuine controversy, rather than personal attacks. It took us years to understand what he was saying, but when we did it struck us with the force of revolution.

So what has this to do with energy?

The last post discussed at no great length a concept in transportation known as PRT or personal rapid transit. We received more responses, some from obviously agitated individuals, than from any other posting we have made over the past year. Clearly, we were doing something right according to the Pearson canon.

We mentioned PRT because it seldom figures in discussions of the future of transportation in the light of declining fossil fuel reserves and because we believe that the concept remains a matter of some interest. We also mentioned that we believe that actual systems are a long way off. Our rather cautious approach to the subject did not prevent a string of passionate replies and a few quite insightful questions.

Here perhaps some background is in order, and I’ll drop the editorial we for a moment. My father was involved in PRT back in the early seventies to the extent that he was charged with studying the phenomenon by the Los Angeles Department of Public Works of which he was an official. During that period interest in the notion was at its height as was federal funding. Richard Nixon for a time was backer and then cooled on the notion, but of course he had other fish to fry. The PRT craze, if you could call it that, was nothing remotely comparable to that surrounding fuel cell powered automobiles a quarter of a century later, and it was far less publicized, but it certainly engaged the attention of transportation authorities such as my father.

I’ll never forget our discussions on the subject. This, we were both convinced, was the future of transportation.

Obviously, it hasn’t been. The technology was just as premature in the seventies as fuel cells appear to be today, and a series of publicly financed boondoggles involving PRT soured public policy types on the whole idea. And, rather curiously, PRT aroused the determined opposition of two groups who normally don’t agree about anything. Those groups consisted of advocates of traditional public transportation systems, primarily light rails, and opponents of the same who tended to lump PRT with light rail to the utter consternation of the PRT camp.
Light rail advocates including many manufacturers of such systems feared that PRT boded no good for them. If it succeeded it would tend to displace many light rail systems, and if it failed it would harden public opposition to mass transit of any sort.

Public transportation opponents had different motivations, some of them covertly ideological. Many believed and continue to believe that public transportation represents a form of creeping socialism, an unwarranted expansion of government that might ultimately result in restrictions in regard to private automobiles.

Here it might be well to remember that a hundred years ago electric trolleys were the dominant form of mechanized urban transportation in the U.S. and that almost all systems were privately owned. Furthermore, they tended to be the province of gung ho entrepreneurs who were, often as not, real estate agents on the side. The streetcar lines encouraged the growth of suburbs, and the streetcar owners took advantage of the fact to organize building projects in the new suburbs. Trolleys were the hot technology of 1905. Who’d have thunk it?

A few further thoughts on the subject of PRTs.

A couple of years ago, I interviewed a multitude of individuals in the PRT business, which in truth is not much of business today. All of the executives with whom I spoke were without exception deeply knowledgeable transportation wonks who had spent years conceptualizing networks and creating predictive models for traffic flow in such networks. They weren’t nut jobs, they weren’t naïve idealists, and many had taught civil engineering on the university level. Having long reported on telecom where extravagant claims were the norm, I was amazed at how cautious these individuals were and how little inclined they were to oversell their own products. Where they were for the most part deficient I think, was in their perceptions of the political hurdles confronting them. People tend not to get out of the PRT field once they’re in it, it’s kind of like organized crime in that regard. It becomes a sort of obsession, and obsessions tend to confound clear thinking regarding external factors.

One reader asked if PRTs might be combined with more conventional automotive transport. Indeed, yes. These are known as dual mode systems and they have their own separate and distinct advocacy groups. In my opinion, the logistical difficulties involved in implementing such systems are far greater than is the case with simple PRTs—they’re approximately twice as complex—but I wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand. Incidentally, several major auto makers have studied such systems extensively.

Our Troubles Are Over

Many who chance to read this blog also browse the various peak oil blogs of which there are several. Peak oil is a hot potato I am seldom inclined to grasp between my thumb and my forefinger, though I suppose I believe that a peak is not only inevitable but likely to arrive sooner than one might wish.

Anyway, rather recently I was speaking with a business acquaintance who was eloquent in his assertions that no departure from the status quo in oil consumption was necessary or desirable, and who advanced some supporting evidence which I’m sure will gratify almost everyone who views the prospect of $5 a gallon low test with some trepidation.

This individual, who will go unnamed since he does not welcome online communications from strangers, advanced the following argument:

Since the world was created approximately six thousand years ago, if we read the scriptures aright, all this talk about petroleum deposits requiring millions of years to form must be obvious nonsense. Instead oil must form almost instantaneously in geological terms, and fresh deposits must be abuilding even as we speak. This same individual who has close connections to the leadership of what has come to be known as the religious right, maintains that this argument will be advanced very forcibly in the months and years to come in order to persuade the electorate that elevated oil prices are a momentary annoyance and that redoubled exploration efforts will save the day. In other words, oil is renewable resource. How remarkable if it were. This argument, by the way, is somewhat distinct from the largely discredited abiotic oil theory which has it that vast new deposits lurk somewhere near the mantle of the earth. Most abioticists are not creationists and do not subscribe to the theory of a young earth.

At any rate, this individual quite evidently accepted the validity of this argument, and indicated that the view is widely held among our corporate as well as our religious leadership. Is this in fact true? I mean to say, are both in fact true? Is crude oil rapidly replenishing itself and does everyone in positions of responsibility think so?

Damned if I know. Maybe someone can enlighten me here.

INDUSTRIAL POLICY PT 2

2006-06-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
BY Daniel Sweeney, Ph.D

INDUSTRIAL POLICY II or WE STICK OUR NECK OUT

Last post we expatiated on what we feel is wrong with the usual calls to arms in respecting to changing our energy regime--bully the auto makers into increasing mileage, fund a lot of fuel cell research in the National Labs, undertake a lot of pilots involving zero emissions vehicles and government fleets, and so on. Such well meaning initiatives haven't worked in the past and there's little reason to believe they'll work in the future. One instigates major changes by building new markets notchivyingying incumbent oligopolists. Does anyone seriously believe, for example, that the Bell Empire would have launched the Internet or even mobile phone service for that matter? Building new markets simply wasn't in their DNA, as they say.

So what's needed here in the way of an industrial policy that might have some chance of succeeding?

Let's try some thought exercises.

Suppose government on some level, preferably local, bought a transportation system that could really exert major competitive pressures on the existing regime and compel them to change to meet changing market conditions and not because of top down regulation.

So what might this entail?

Ever since the nineteen sixties a number of transportation mavens, some in academia, some in the automobile industry, and some in private companies have talked about what is known as personal rapid transit. Personal rapid transit is a form of public transportation but it is the very antitheses of bus lines, light rail, traditional railroads, and all of the slow, crowded, noisy, and expensive mass transit systems most of us have grown to hate.

Personal rapid transit is only possible with the latest technology. What it consists of is cars that carry one or at most a few persons, in other words, a single party, and take that party directly to the designated destination via instructions punched at a terminal or possibly through voice commands. The car is summoned by the rider at a terminal and appears in no more than three minutes and then proceeds directly to the destination at speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour and perhaps in excess of 100mph. There are no stops, no remembering schedules or where to get off, no set routes, and there is no congestion because the entire system is computer controlled and access of vehicles is metered to maintain proper spacing. Cars onload and offload on sidetracks to avoid delays and are monitored at all times to prevent vandalism or attacks on occupants. Offenders within the cars are immediately transported to the nearest police stations. Rush hour delays are eliminated, and riders can go anywhere within a large metropolitan area within minutes. Furthermore, because the individual cars are extremely light compared to so-called light rails, project costs are fraction of those of existing systems.

Personal rapid transit is radically different from any existing metropolitan public transit system. The vehicles are faster by far than any competing system and provide the rider with complete privacy.

So where do they operate, and when is one coming here?

While many companies have developed prototype PRT vehicles, no one has succeeded in selling a system yet. No city has been willing to commit to a system because no system has proven itself. Simply put, itÂs much easier for urban transit authorities to vote for conventional light rail systems even if no one rides them and they lose money. No one ever gets penalized for upholding the status quo.

Regardless of the lack of working examples, we are absolutely convinced that PRTs could work with existing technology. They couldnÂt have worked in the late sixties when they were conceived because the cost of the required computing power was prohibitive and because computer modeling of complex systems was in its infancy. But today we see no fundamentally intractable engineering problems.

A PRT would have vastly greater energy efficiency than today's automotive transport and would almost certainly reduce automobile usage in urban areas once the systems were built out. And mandates for clean electrical sources in powering such systems could take a big, big bite out of particulate emissions and carbon dioxide emissions.

True, there are many skeptics concerning PRTs, and any Web search on the subject will reveal truly venomous opposition full of the usual Web incivility to the effect that anyone who disagrees with the writer is both a sack of shit and an idiot (what motivates such vicious personal attacks in what is after all a technical discussion?). But we have yet to see any arguments that convince us that such a system would be impossible to build with existing technology or presents engineering problems of the magnitude of say a suborbital airliner. Financing such a system would assuredly be difficult, but the existing automotive transportation is simply not going to function better in the future. Streets will grow more and more congested, the air will grow more and more polluted, and gasoline will grow dearer and dearer. Somewhere someone will build such a system and make it work. And when that happens the opposition will have no where to go but back to its own online discussion groups.

So do an end run around the auto makers. Build one system and make it work in one big city and soon everyone will want one. The auto makers could try to lobby them out of existence, but I doubt they could pull it off, especially if gas prices keep going up. No one but the most committed right wing ideologue would willingly endure hours in transit to and from the job site while paying twenty dollars per day for gasoline when he could climb into an automated jitney and get to his destination in minutes for a couple of bucks. Even Americans aren't that crazy.

Second Thought Exercise

A lot of people believe that the mid term future of the private automobile is the so-called plug-in hybrid where advanced batteries do a lot of the work and an internal combustion engine functions as balance of plant as it were. Several companies are already in the business of performing aftermarket modifications on Toyota Priuses to permit plug-in recharging and one major automotive parts manufacturer has formed a partnership with AFS Trinity, a California battery and flywheel manufacturer, to launch a vehicle.

We think that such cars are almost inevitable if gas prices stay elevated, and they probably represent a correct response on the part of the public in terms of promoting the long term economic health of the nation. They will, however, be resisted by American auto makers who bet the farm on SUVs and bet wrong and now need to improvise some kind of survival strategy for themselves.

So how to speed the adoption process along? How about temporary government sponsorship of free or almost free DC charging stations. DC charging, battery to battery, only requires a few minutes as opposed to hours for AC recharging, and so the purchaser of the plug-in hybrid is doubly encouraged. One needn't really publicize such charging stations people will find out, and the energy oligopolists will be caught flat footed. Maybe they will get them closed down by crying foul, although one could argue that no foul is being committed when the U.S. auto makers are perfectly free to make their own plug ins. But even if they succeed, the plug-ins themselves would not go away and would have received the initial impetus to grow in the marketplace.

Of course, the other attractive feature of plug-ins, is that they don't require public infrastructure. One can charge the vehicle at home with off-peak hour electricity which is a far more energy efficient process than running off gasoline even when fossil fuel is used to generate the electricity.

Just ThinkingÂ.

So what's the chance of either thought exercise being realized? We think PRTs are a very long shot, and that plug-ins won't happen quickly but are fairly likely in the long term. We also doubt that anything approaching an effective new industrial policy for transportation will be implemented. It's easier to make political hay with hot button social issues and it requires a lot less hard analytical work.

Industrial Policy

2006-05-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

ENERGY TRANSITIONS AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY
BY DAN SWEENEY, PhD

Way back when at the end of the nineteen eighties when the first George Bush was mounting his successful campaign for President, the big thing with the so-called New Democrats of that period was industrial policy. You remember, Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart, Donna Rice…well, maybe not Donna Rice, but the other two…. These were guys who were gonna revitalize the party, and industrial policy was a part of their platform.

So what was it? One could assume that it could be almost anything having to do with guiding the industrial sector, but in the minds of the New Democrats it was actually something fairly specific. It was emulating the Japanese, specifically the Japanese organization known as MITI that imposed overarching directives on the Japanese manufacturing sector, pushing it to enter into certain new industries or to emphasize certain of those that had already been penetrated. MITI, so the thinking went at the time, had enabled the Japanese to target certain industries where the U.S. had formerly been dominant such as automobiles, consumer electronics, and steel production, and subsequently to mount powerful challenges that would either displace the American incumbents or rob them of significant market share.

The idea was that we had to learn from the Japanese, and that Big Government which Democrats were supposed to love so dearly was going to shift from dispersing welfare and cracking down on safety violations and become an active partner with business in boosting industrial capacity in key areas.

Industrial policy caught a lot of Republicans flat footed. Japanese firms were the models in American business schools at the time and undeniably they were kicking ass in the markets they had chosen to enter. But most conservatives simply didn’t cotton to the idea of the government “picking winners”, to reprise the argot of the time. They were frankly confused, and they decided that the whole thing was best ignored.

Well, anyway, it turned out that industrial policy didn’t get much exposure in the ensuing campaign when Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic nomination after the erstwhile leader Gary Hart got a lap dance from Donna Rice on the deck of the good ship Monkey Business. (Ms. Rice has enjoyed a subsequent career as spokesperson for the religious right whom one suspects might have actually hired her to perform that long ago lap dance.) Hart was the real industrial policy booster in the party just as Jack Kemp was associated with flat tax on the other side of the aisle, and, with Hart out of action, industrial policy was effectively off the table. Dukakis didn’t so much as mention it, in fact he didn’t say much of anything that was memorable and spent most of the time attempting to remove the slime with which Lee Atwater was pelting him. He lost, and George H.W. Bush, who had no interest in industrial policy whatsoever, went on to attempt to sell the American public on “the thousand points of light” which sounds like something terribly Zen and never seems to have been clearly defined by anyone.

Wild Bill Clinton who succeeded Bush Pere was supposedly ideologically similar to Tsongas, Hart, and certainly to Donna Rice, but we don’t recall him saying squat about industrial policy, and Al Gore was mum as well. It was one of those notions like community based policing that briefly make for animated conversation at wonk taverns but don’t hold anyone’s attention for more than a few months.

So why bring it up now?

Because we need to start thinking about it again in the context of energy.

Here’s the problem. At some point the world has to transition to sustainable energy sources. Unfortunately, we can’t expect energy markets to function the way they did when previous energy sources came to the fore, and the industrial policies of the past aren’t likely to work to support such a transition.

So we had industrial policies in the past? How could that be when the Japanese came up with idea only a few decades ago?

It turns out that the Japanese did not invent industrial policy, though what they did with it was unique. Japanese industrial policy was and is tied to developing export markets for Japanese good and adding capacity to the Japanese industrial sector to support those markets. American industrial policy, and we always had one, was much more concerned with domestic markets and with effecting fundamental changes in American life through core technological transformations.

American government-sanctioned industrial policy favored the construction of the railroads and the dissemination of motorized transport. Federally insured bonds financed the great railroad expansion following the Civil War, and Federal land grants to the Western railroads of one mile of land on each side of the tracks was a sheer giveaway.

We find further industrial policy in regard to energy emerging in the twentieth century, this time involving both the Federal and local government and massive industrial and financial combinations. Three examples come readily to mind.

When the electrical utilities were building out at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, many were financed by the banking trust headed by the House of Morgan which controlled, directly or indirectly, most of the investment capital in the country—private industrial policy, as it were. Furthermore, local governments began to grant monopoly status to electrical utilities in return for token rate regulation on the grounds that they were “natural monopolies”.

The automobile industry and the oil industry that powered it grew as a direct result of government subsidies. Government built almost all the roads over which automobiles traveled and granted oil producers depletion allowances that relieved them, for the most part, from the burden of paying taxes like the rest of us. It all culminated in the Interstate Highway System of the nineteen fifties when the Feds began taxing gasoline and using the revenues to build superhighways.

So now it’s fifty years on, and we’ve got an energy crisis on our hands which, rest assured, is going to get worse. What can the government do apart from drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Preserve or invading Iran? What is the place of industrial policy at this particular juncture?

The usual palliatives being mentioned in the press, don’t, unfortunately, represent very fresh thinking.

A lot of people are all for saddling the auto manufacturers with stringent regulations in order to compel them to boost fuel efficiency. Further funding of hydrogen fuel cell research at the National Laboratories is also being advocated, said research, presumably, being shared with the auto makers who will pass on the benefits to the public.

Tax breaks for renewable energy also get a lot of support as do further subsidies for the coal industry. Finally, higher gasoline taxes have their supporters, including, most surprisingly, Grover Norquist, the right wing gray eminence who never met a tax he didn’t detest.

So let’s cast a critical eye on all of this conventional wisdom and try to determine if it’s wise at all, that is, if represents appropriate industrial policy.

Cajoling the auto industry into become creative with a lot of burdensome regulations strikes us as fairly absurd—kind of like Singapore dictator Lee Kew’s efforts to coerce his cowed subjects into becoming innovators. As one inventor of our acquaintance told us, the kind of young, rebellious engineers that actually innovate don’t tend to take jobs at General Motors, and, absent such individuals, the organization’s ability to innovate simply isn’t that great. Sure what’s left of the U.S. auto industry can eke out a few more miles per gallon out of existing designs, but they’re not inclined to do anything radical. What they’re more likely to do is lobby Congress to back off, something they’re very, very good at.

We don’t see the official efforts of the National Labs stimulating any revolutions either. We think they do great work, but unlike, say Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, which wrought revolutions in communications, computing, home entertainment, and business machines, the Labs aren’t really oriented toward product development.

The problem here as we see it is a refusal to grapple with the implications of a major technological transformation. Everyone expects that somehow we’re going to change over to this clean, green economy where everything works pretty much like it does now except there’s no smoke and no anxiety attacks at pump. All we’ve got to do is just get over our “addiction” to foreign oil.

This whole discussion we’re having about energy today is so wanting in intellectual clarity and rigor that it is hard to know where to begin in dispelling some of the misconceptions, but we have to try simply because the exercise is so vitally important.

First, we need to stop talking about oil addiction. The implication here is that some kind of sinful self indulgence got us where we are and a little self discipline can set things right. Oil and the mass affluence of late twentieth century America were closely conjoined. The whole of our industrial civilization was built upon it. Absent cheap oil America would not have enjoyed its age of affluence and plentiful material comforts. Only the few would have experienced abundance. What everyone is calling addition was more in the nature of nourishment.

We need to continue to use petroleum because our world is literally built of petrochemicals. What we do need to do is stop burning petroleum. It’s way too valuable to burn. In fact petroleum is the most useful substance in the world. It’s God’s gift and to burn it for energy is a sacrilege.

So just substitute biodiesel or ethanol and set up a bunch of subsidies to speed that along? It’s not so easy unfortunately.

When one goes about substituting for materials or artifacts that serve as the foundation of an entire technological edifice that edifice is apt to change fundamentally or to come tumbling down to be replaced by something else. We know this from past technological transformations.

The only reason we started using fossil fuel in the first place was because we began to run out of wood. England in the thirteenth century was already cutting down most of its forests and firewood was becoming constrained while coal was still readily obtainable from surface outcroppings. Nobody really liked coal—it smelled bad, gave off choking smoke, and cast soot over everything—but what were you going to do, freeze to death?

Coat turned out to be not a very direct substitute for wood as a fuel. It polluted like hell but at the same time it burned much more fiercely. When steam engines came into use in the eighteenth century coal’s hot flame was greatly appreciated. It facilitated the mechanization of industry in a way that wood never could have.

No one could have built a large scale industrial civilization with wood fuel. It took coal. Coal changed everything. And going from petroleum to renewable fuels is likely to change everything as well. But not in the same ways.

What we need to do here in setting a halfway intelligent industrial policy is consider the fact that renewable fuels will not be straight substitutes for petroleum and will not permit the continuation of our current mode of existence. We need to plan way beyond reducing dependence on foreign oil and looking for substitutes because there are no real substitutes. A world with less oil will be a very different world, one that is apt to be very hostile toward our existing transportation and electrical industries.

Industrial policies based on the notion of propping up existing industries and jawboning them into changing are not going to work, at least not in our society. Owners of coal fired electrical generation facilities are not going eliminate carbon emissions, they’re going to back Republican administrations that favor “voluntary emission curbs”. Automobile manufacturers are not going to scrap their production facilities and build hydrogen fuel cell cars. There is no such thing as a smoothly orchestrated technological revolution where the incumbents are in fact revolutionaries. Or as one management consultant put it, “bottlenecks are always at the top of the bottle, they always involve existing top management.”

So what does the government do, do nothing? Trot out some red herring issue like building electrified fences across from Tiajuana, or prayer in the schools, or gay marriage?

Or, to put it another way, what would we say to some well intentioned politician, if such exists, who asked us how to craft policies that will really make a difference?

That, gentle reader, is the subject of the next post.

DILUTING DINOSAUR JUICE

2006-05-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

DILUTING DINOSAUR JUICE
by Dan Sweeney, Ph.D

It’s been a long time since our last post, but we have not been inactive. We were preparing our hydrogen report for release, and it should hit the streets on the 1st of May.

The success of the study will determine our further involvement in energy industry analysis. If it doesn’t sell, we’ll likely go back to so-called high tech reporting which today really only covers only one area of technology, namely IT, information technology. Such is investor infatuation with all things digital, that many people assume that technical innovation is confined to the areas of computing and communications electronics.

If the hydrogen study finds a market and an audience, our next venture will address a topic that is equally timely and just as weighty, namely, alternative fuels. (Obviously, if one strives for grammatical correctness one cannot use the word alternative in the plural, but the term alternative fuels has become part of the energy dictionary, so grammar be damned.)

With gasoline prices having reached the lofty peak of $3.50 per gallon in many areas, the citizenry is, to say the least agitated—sufficiently so that politicians are agitated too. Which is all very curious because anyone with a will to know could have foreseen many years ago that this day of reckoning was on its way. But of course no one with legislative responsibilities was prepared to propose ameliorative actions because a crippling partisan attack would have followed.

Now it seems everyone in political office and in the press is an instant expert on energy policies and energy technologies. Interestingly, many of the proposals we’re seeing in the press have to do with alternative fuels.

Ethanol, biodiesel, and, yes, hydrogen, all have their advocates, and the underlying assumption behind all of the advocacy is that comprehensive solutions are ready at hand if only those opposing a particular policy would get their heads out of their nether regions. Everything is obvious to the instant expert. Just read the editorials. Those editorializing have all the answers.

We’ve been studying these issues intensively for five years, and we certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, but then we’re not inclined to editorializing either. The business of the analyst is to analyze not to advocate. One must confine oneself to determining what is likely to happen rather than declaring what one thinks should happen.

So here we go.

Regardless of how many glaciers melt and polar bears succumb in the ensuing months and years, global climate change is not going to drive energy policy in the U.S. Greenhouse emissions will continue to climb. Indeed if emissions trading were to become a real market, one could grow rich on commissions.

Hydrogen fuel cells are not going to happen, at least not in the transportation sector regardless of what George Bush says. Hydrogen will remain much more expensive than gasoline for the foreseeable future, and increases in the cost of hydrogen will tend to track increases in the cost of petroleum. And there’s no way that the cost of fuel cells themselves will drop sufficiently to permit mass adoption.

What will happen is that people will look to alternate fuels burned in internal combustion engines as the solution to high gasoline prices.

Such fuels include all manner of hydrocarbon compounds including naptha and naptha derivatives such as gasoline produced from unconventional sources such as coal, unconventional petroleum, natural gas, and biomass; ethanol, methanol, and other alcohols; methyl ether; methyl ester and other forms of so-called biodiesel; butane and propane; octane; liquid petroleum gas; and on and on. The total number of contenders is great, and because internal combustion engines cannot normally run on more than one type of fuel, likely no more than four alternate fuels will find a market.

So who will be the winners and who the losers? That will be the subject of our next report. Right now we don’t know the answer because no one ourselves included has ever performed a comprehensive assessment of competitive fuel technologies. What we have instead is self serving advocacy from trade groups representing the various feed stocks used to produce alternate fuels.

What we can say with some confidence is that alternate fuels will probably be initially used as additives to stretch supplies of conventional petroleum products and not as substitutes or replacements. We believe that oil companies will strive to maintain control over the distribution of motor fuels and that independents attempting to sell replacements will face a daunting uphill struggle due to the incredible expenses involved in building parallel distribution networks.

We are also certain that alternate fuels will not lead to low fuel prices though they could help to stabilize prices at some level which will probably be even higher than that for gasoline today.

Even with consumers desperate for some panacea, alternate fuel innovators are going to have difficulty attracting sufficient investment to go into full production. There is simply too much confusion as to which technology is most likely to succeed, and the lengthy period required to set up production facilities is a further inhibitor as is the difficulty of securing distribution. The lack of coordination with auto manufacturers is also a significant problem.

High fuel prices are here to say and they will be first a shock and then a permanent drag upon the economy. Timidity, intransigence, and heavy investment in existing technology will make it difficult for key institutions to implement the changes required to meet the needs of our mature industrial society and consumer culture. Difficult times lie ahead. But they will certainly be interesting.

THE HYDROGEN REPORT

2006-03-31T12:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
The Hydrogen Report - Some Summary Findings and Some Unanswered Questions

BY Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

We have just completed our report on hydrogen and it will soon go on sale. Visant Strategies with whom we are associated will publish it. The document is aimed at corporations involved in or contemplating involvement in the hydrogen business and at governmental bodies grappling with the implications of the hydrogen economy.

Much of the report deals with specific markets for hydrogen, and since the information is for sale and constitutes the primary value of the report we cannot provide that data here, except to say that the overall market for hydrogen is significantly smaller than the figure of 50 million tons that is bandied about with some frequency.

One thing that we can say is that the use of hydrogen in energy applications, the market that constitutes the “hydrogen economy”, is pretty close to nonexistent as yet, and its future is dependent upon a number of contingencies, some having to do with technology and others with private finance and governmental policies.

Any attempt to initiate a hydrogen economy with current technology would almost certainly fail for reasons given in the report. A number of technical breakthroughs rather than incremental improvements would have to occur in a number of key areas—fuel cell design, hydrogen storage, hydrogen generation (particularly in the design of electrolyzers), hydrogen transmission, the management of a largely or wholly renewables based electrical grid, and in the design of power conversion equipment.

Quite apart from technical feasibility, financing a move to a renewables based hydrogen economy would probably ultimately entail tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars—in other words, the commitment of sizable fraction of U.S. industrial capacity and financial resources. This would of course involve some very hard choices. Consider that the current level of military funding in the U.S. is only about a half trillion dollars a year, and that that it is arguably an enormous drag on the rest of the economy.

Any attempt to construct a hydrogen economy quickly would starve other industries of credit and investment and would involve direct or indirect government subsidies that would impact basic government services.

A couple of weeks ago we attended a hydrogen investment conference in Long Beach, California, where such issues were conveniently ignored, or, to put it another way, assumed not to exist. Instead a hydrogen Rapture was proclaimed by all and sundry, just as it had been in several previous hydrogen shows and, doubtless, will be again over the course of the next several years.

All of which left us with troubling questions which we have difficulty in answering.

We should begin by saying that we are quite confident of our pessimistic analysis of the economics of a hydrogen economy. Maybe some day, but not with current technology or the current political climate. And yet damned near everyone seems to be lined up behind it—the major oil companies, the auto manufacturers, major chemical companies, leading academics, environmentalists, and government spokespersons from many nations including our own. Even staunchly anti-environmental George W. Bush endorses the idea.

Now we performed our analysis using data in the public domain. The pricing of hydrogen and hydrogen generating equipment, fuel cells, hydrogen powered internal combustion engines, and renewable electrical generation equipment is all readily available as are the operational costs associated with each. All we did was add and multiply, the same kind of tedious tabulations we used to perform when we did statistical studies for a government agency. Nothing that a mathematically challenged chimpanzee couldn’t do. We also made certain assumptions as to economies of scale which were based on observations that have generally true in other industries.

Surely all of these corporate executives and governmental bodies must know the same things we do. They’ve got guys that can add and multiply. Hell, they’ve got whole office buildings full of bean counters, and you really only need one and a few man weeks to dedicate to the task. All you need to do is tell somebody what it takes in the way of infrastructure to establish a hydrogen economy and then task that somebody with checking prices and running the numbers.

I wish we had an answer as to what is going on here, but we don’t. We are deeply and genuinely mystified.

Why would so many people get behind anything so uncertain, particularly when they’re gambling with our future, everyone’s future? We have an energy crisis looming in the middle distance, one that is going to determine the kind of lives our grandchildren have. We need to be planning coping strategies that can be accomplished with current technology, not technology that may exist ten, twenty, thirty years from now. In energy many expected breakthroughs never occur. No one has succeeded in building a fusion reactor after fifty years of trying. No one has ever made a room temperature superconductor after thirty years of intensive and expensive research. No one has demonstrated a cost effective, field proven ocean energy system after more than fifty years of experimentation. And no one has succeeded in perfecting a low cost fuel cell after decades of efforts and billions of dollars in funding.

Whatever we do, it has to be done with tools that are available today, not something predicated on untold man years of additional research. That research might never get done for any of a number of reasons, and even if it is, it might not pan out.

A final thought. At the hydrogen conference, one David Freeman, an energy official in the Carter Administration and later a manager of several large public utilities, addressed the attendees. Freeman is a man not noted for diplomacy or mincing words. What he told the audience was this. Quit undertaking pilot program and start launching products. Build markets now, not next year or the year after. We couldn’t agree more.

SOLID ACID

2006-03-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

SOLID ACID FUEL CELLS – THE HOLY GRAIL?
BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PhD

In this blog we have had frequent occasion to comment upon the inflated expectations fostered among the public by many individuals within the fuel cell industry. At the beginning of this decade fuel cell proponents were confidently predicting that the rollout of fuel cell vehicles would be well underway by mid decade and that a hydrogen transition would be beginning. Obviously such predictions were false.

Introducing any radically new technology is difficult, but fuel cells present special problems which have not proven amenable to easy solutions. Five years ago, the PEM (polymer electrolyte) type of fuel cell, generally seen as the most promising technology, was about an order of magnitude too expensive to sell in designated markets and suffered from serious problems of manufacturability, useful lifespan, and reliability. Since then pricing has not descended significantly and technical limitations have at best been ameliorated.

Fuel cell manufacturers still offer the same assurances that solutions are in the offing and that the technology is essentially good to go, but investors are beginning to have second thoughts, and without a great deal of further investment there is little chance of technical hurdles being overcome.

We have long believed that the best chance for the fuel cell industry would be the development of some entirely new chemistry. We felt that existing designs were probably approaching their design limits and that further investment might well be misguided. Now just such a fundamentally new design has appeared, the solid acid fuel cell.

Solid acids are a recently described class of chemicals intermediate between salts and acids in their characteristics. At somewhat elevated temperatures in the 300 to 400 Centrigade range such substances become “superprotonic” permitting single protons representing hydrogen ions to migrate to an anode or positively charged terminal while blocking oxygen and other atoms.

Nafion, used in PEM fuel cells, has similar properties, but Nafion tends to degrade at temperatures over 80 C, and must be used in conjunction with a costly platinum catalyst. Nafion is also vulnerable to carbon monoxide poisoning and requires ultra high purity hydrogen gas. Furthermore, Nafion must be continually hydrated with distilled water in precise amounts. Finally, Nafion itself is extremely costly.

Nafion is used in almost all PEM fuel cells sold today. For all its limitations, it is considered the best available material by most manufacturers. But if Superprotonic Inc., a Southern California based startup founded by refugees from Cal Tech, is correct, Nafion may now have a real challenger.

According to Calum Chisolm, the president of the firm, Superprotonic’s solid acid membrane possesses all of the desirable characteristics long sought in a fuel cell electrolyte. It operates at medium temperatures, and cannot only tolerate low purity hydrogen but can directly reform methanol and ethanol. It doesn’t require rare earth catalysts, it is cheap to manufacture and form, it is impervious to carbon monoxide, and it doesn’t need hydrdation. Furthermore, it appears to be robust.

We are very used to hyperbole and inflated claims in this business, and so we will reserve judgment on the strength of Superprotonic’s assertions until they are proven or disproven in the marketplace. We did, however, find Dr. Chisolm, refreshingly unassuming when we interviewed him. He admitted that unforeseen obstacles to commercialization could arise and that his company was at a relatively early stage in the development cycle of the solid acid fuel cell.

It should be noted here that other manufacturers such as ITM in Britain, Pemeas in Germany, and PolyFuel here in the U.S. have introduced other alternatives to Nafion without achieving singular success. Nafion has been around since the nineteen sixties and extensive research in Nafion based PEM cells goes back almost twenty years. For all its problems, Nafion has a track record, and Nafion PEM cells are in the marketplace now.

Chisolm informs us that several Japanese electronics majors are also pursuing research in solid acid membranes, so evidently the technology has momentum. We would expect that if its promise is fulfilled we might be seeing some productization early in the next decade. And as for fuel cell vehicles based on solid acid? If it works, and that’s a big if, don’t count on seeing anything until the twenties of this century and that is likely to be limited production. Clearly the fuel cell future we’ve all been hearing about is a good ways off even best case.

Coming Attractions

2006-03-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

The President's sudden conversion to energy policy

2006-02-24T14:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

BUSH AND ENERGY BREAKTHROUGHS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

As I am fond of insisting to my friends, nothing can diminish the unconditional love I feel for George W. Bush whom I believe to be anointed by God to lead this country. Nevertheless, I would have to say that if anything could diminish that love, it would be what passes for an energy policy on the part of this Administration.

This week our President announced that the U.S. was on the verge of energy breakthroughs that would startle most Americans. That statement is as disingenuous as the famous “mission accomplished” nearly three years ago.

As an energy analyst I am inundated by such claims. Scarcely a day passes that I don’t happen upon some company I’ve not encountered previously announcing a “breakthrough”. Consequently my arousal threshold is becoming increasingly elevated.

I am reminded here of a luminous essay penned by the great French actor and critic Antonin Artaud entitled “No More Masterpieces”. Artaud was a radical modernist in the arts and he abhorred the notion of sacred masterpieces, particularly in regard to the theater. I feel similarly about “breakthroughs” in the energy business. We need to stop talking about them and expecting them to occur. Like artistic masterpieces they belong to the past. The last real breakthrough in energy was Nicola Tesla’s development of three phase alternating current in the late eighteen eighties. Since then it’s all been downhill.

I don’t mean there isn’t progress, but there aren’t breakthroughs. Here’s why.

Breakthroughs imply the notion of some outside-the-box kind of guy having a brainstorm that is quickly turned into a technology revolution because everything’s moving at Internet speed now. Things like that happen in the software world where the outside-the-box guys are simply writing code and all nighters fueled by plenty of cappuccino can result in a new search engine and a new way of life. Unfortunately, energy revolutions are not software downloads. They involve massive construction and mega mega bucks, not some mad money thrown together by a venture capital firm.

Let’s consider cellulosic ethanol which Bush is been promoting—I wonder who told him about that? A Canadian company called Iogen has been promoting some pretty interesting technology involving enzymes for several years, and there are various labs doing things with micro-organisms. Fairly low cost cellulosic ethanol probably is doable, but right now there is only one plant that’s even in the planning stage in the U.S., and that’s not due to produce anything for years. Most people who’ve studied the process think that even the most massive exploitation of available land resources for alcohol production could only produce about a third of the fuel used in transportation today, and building up the infrastructure for that would take decades.

And where’s the money going to come from? The financial community shows no likelihood of springing for ethanol on a massive scale, and here we’re talking about trillions, not billions. Is Bush just going to subsidize it and pump up the deficit some more? He’s already spending one half trillion on the military. Is he going to shift some of that away to energy?

Bush also visited the Ovonics Division of Energy Conversion Devices and talked that up. The Oshinksy family that runs the thing are really smart people and undoubtedly they’ve advanced the art of battery design considerably, but the fact is that the auto manufacturers are not developing the kind of plug-in hybrids that could significantly lessen dependence upon petroleum. Whatever battery breakthroughs are going to occur at Ovonics or elsewhere are pretty meaningless unless they’re widely adopted.

Bush’s so-called “clean coal” initiatives are another big joke and anything but breakthroughs. Unless you’re talking about coal gasification and/or sequestration, you’re just throwing words around. Truly clean coal involves everybody who is operating coal fired plants doing extensive retrofits which cost tons of money. Adding a scrubber just ain’t gonna cut it. No one is going to do the retrofits absent strong financial incentives, especially if they can lobby the legislature to pass bogus “clean coal” legislation that puts “voluntary compliance” measures in place. Incidentally, I can’t help asking myself why in God’s name would someone legislate voluntary compliance. You can always volunteer to pollute less if you’re so inclined. Older legislation didn’t oblige you to pollute. The market did, however. Plainly put, it’s a lot cheaper to pollute than to renovate your plant.

To return to our initial subject, technology breakthroughs, the fallacy here is that technological breakthroughs automatically diffuse through the industrial establishment. In fact there are countless examples of countries developing technologies and then doing nothing with them. England developed AC electrical power, albeit in crude form, before the U.S., but neglected to set up generating stations. An Austrian inventor made a vacuum tube amplifier the same year as the American Lee De Forest, but did not promote his invention. U.S. electronics firms developed discrete transistors, videocassette recorders, cellular telephones, and optical disc players and then let Japanese and European firms bring those inventions to market and profit by them.

Bush is partially right in his pronouncements concerning new energy technologies, however. A tremendous amount of research and entrepreneurial activity in the area of new energy technology is taking place in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean it is going to see expression in an altered energy regime.

If we as Americans had the national will, which we don’t, we could effectively address our energy problems with current technology and we could plan for incremental improvements that would ultimately make the task easier. The likelihood of that happening is very slight, however.

The problem is fundamental. Previous U.S. energy transformations well as transformations within other infrastructure technologies such communications and transportation were very largely market driven and rewarded investors with excellent short term and mid term profits. It’s difficult to see how a replacement technology within the energy sphere would do the same. And yet attempting to impose top down, command economy imperatives is fraught with a multitude of hazards. There are no inherent feedback mechanisms for stabilizing command economies other than infrequent elections, and they frequently pursue ill-conceived policies long after a market driven economy would have abandoned them. They’re also subject to corrupt practices.

In short the problems we’re facing have more to do with the nature of our society and our lack of a pre-existing model for an energy transformation that would free us from dependence on foreign fossil fuel. Technology itself does not constitute the biggest hurdle.

ADDICTION TO OIL? WHAT CAN WE DO?

2006-02-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

Is ethanol the answer?
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

We recently received a couple of queries regarding celluosic ethanol, perhaps prompted by President Bush’s reference to the topic in his State of the Union message. Here are our thoughts on the matter.

First of all, we were rather surprised that Bush should mention celluosic ethanol in the first place. It is a rather esoteric technique for producing the fuel, and there are no commercial operations yet in operation in the U.S. though one is in the planning stage. We wonder who in the Administration decided to float this notion. Cellulosic ethanol scarcely has a lobby today, and we’d always assumed that Bush was most sensitive to the needs of past campaign contributors.

In fact, cellulosic ethanol probably has a place in the transportation industry in the coming years. We do not believe that the economics of hydrogen are such that it will be feasible anytime soon, and so the country will have to continue to make do with liquid hydrocarbons. Upping the percentage of ethanol in gasoline—a couple of percent is usual today—and deriving it from low cost feed stocks strikes us as a pretty good idea.

Ethanol derived from food crops such as corn has gotten a fairly bad rap in the environmental community, with many detractors claiming that more energy is required to produce it than can be derived from burning it. We’ve read many well-to-wheel efficiency studies on the subject, and while we’re inclined to believe that there is a modest net energy gain, it doesn’t seem to be very great. The thermodynamics of cellulosic ethanol look much better though, and we think it’s a good renewable biofuel.

The Department of Energy has published a number of studies on the subject as have various academic researchers, and the current thinking is that ethanol of whatever derivation could not be produced in sufficient quantities to serve as complete substitute for fossil fuel. True, it can be harvested from fast growing plants like switch grass, but unlike the case with crops intended for food, everything in the plant is used and so soil depletion tends to be rapid. There’s just too much organic material being removed for the practice to be sustainable on a vast scale.

And there are other issues. Ethanol, when burned in internal combustion engines, produces fewer greenhouse emissions than a quantity of gasoline of equal energy value, but it’s far from zero emissions. The theory is that the plant matter used to produce it will have fixed a quantity of atmospheric carbon equal to that emitted, but if any fossil fuel is used in the production process, which is inevitably the case, the carbon balance is not so favorable.

The other problem with ethanol is that it contains only about half the energy of gasoline by volume so you’re looking at a reduced cruising range if ethanol is the sole fuel. Usually, however, it is mixed with gasoline, and we see it being used in this manner if ethanol production significantly increases.

In any case, we can only speculate as to how serious George Bush is about promoting energy independence, or for that matter, in instituting an energy policy of real coherence. And it’s not only Bush, very few elected officials seem prepared to confront our looming energy problems with realistic proposals for change. It’s as if the prevailing attitude is that the really bad stuff is going to happen on someone else’s watch and so the best choice is to do nothing.

The preponderance of expert opinion has it that a peak in oil production and probably natural gas production as well will occur before 2025, and some believe it is imminent now. This is a matter of the gravest concern and is far, far more important than preventing the cloning of humans or Afghan hounds, outlawing homosexual marriage, re-instituting prayer in the schools, or any of the other pseudo issues that seem to fascinate the American electorate. Acute shortages of petroleum and natural gas, unless addressed with effective countermeasures, will have a devastating effect on the economy here and abroad and will lead to fierce competitions for remaining supplies and possibly to resource wars. The economies of developed nations depend upon petroleum just as much as the human body depends upon its own blood.

We believe that the problems involved in effecting a transition from utter dependence upon petroleum and natural gas are very formidable and not susceptible to easy answers. We consider ourselves to be staunch environmentalists, but at the same time we are continually dismayed and exasperated by the many well meaning individuals in the green community who express the belief that simply by building wind turbines and hydrogen filling stations our problems are going to be solved, and that the only people standing in the way are the big bad oil companies with a stake in the status quo.

We have just completed a monumental study of industrial hydrogen and our analysis indicates that with present technologies and cost structures expenditures of tens of trillions if not hundreds of trillions of dollars would be required to effectuate a hydrogen transition in the U.S. alone. We see absolutely no evidence that public or private monies in such amounts are being allocated for the purpose or that the price of replacement infrastructure will fall sufficiently to permit a painless transition.

Past energy revolutions have generally been the result of entrepreneurial activities, at least in the Western World. But now everybody is thinking in terms of top down economic models, even someone as right wing as Bush. And the problem is that most of these models are designed to preserve as much of the status quo as possible. Rather than re-examining our entire transportation infrastructure, we are enjoined to wait until the auto companies bring out fuel cell automobiles, as if they ever will. Rather than explore the possibility that our current fueling structure may be entirely obsolete, we are encouraged to smile at all those pilot hydrogen filling stations the oil companies are setting up, as if is the will of God that those who control the energy industries of today must continue to control them for all eternity.

The great American anthropologist Edward Hall, who performed epochal cross cultural studies of how different culture experience the dimensions of time and space, said in one of his books that Americans are very good at planning for the future, but no more than ten years out. A historical view of the future is almost entirely lacking in our culture and arguably in the ancestral culture of England. And that historical myopia appears to be getting worse. We make our living covering high technology and we are continually confronted by the attitude of “I’ll get my mine now and the hell with later.” As that attitude solidifies into the cultural bedrock of the society there is very little incentive to deal with issues like looming energy crises. Instead one looks to quick fixes like perhaps hogging all the oil in the Middle East and daring anyone to do anything about it.

We hope we’re dead wrong and that our pessimism is entirely unwarranted. But we think that there is abundant evidence that we are right. Good night, and God bless.

STATE OF THE UNION, HUH?

2006-01-31T17:02:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
ENERGY SELF SUFFICIENCY
BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PH.D

Today is the day of George W. Bush’s State of the Union Message. Predictably, it contains references to the Bush Administration’s putative policy for energy independence, namely, stepped up oil exploration and drilling on American soil.

While energy independence seems a laudable goal, is this in fact the way to achieve it?

If one includes unconventional oil resources, primarily oil shale here in the U.S., the answer is a very qualified yes, and, in fact Bush recently authorized renewed exploration and exploitation of the Green River oil shale deposits which lie almost entirely upon Federal lands in the Rocky Mountains. But Bush’s real focus is elsewhere. The eyes of his Administration are on the Alaska Wildlife Refuge which has long been off limits to oil companies but which will almost surely be opened to exploration later in Bush’s second term.

Many objections have been raised as to this gambit on environmental grounds, but remarkably few members of the press have addressed the central issue, namely, just how much oil is likely to reside in this region.

Current D.O.E. estimates range from just shy of 6 billion barrels to as much as 16 billion. Since total proven reserves for all of the U.S. stand at 21 billion, this cache of oil could substantially increase the overall tally for proven reserves, no doubt about it.

Compared to oil shale or Canadian tar sands, this is pretty negligible, however. Both reserves will probably yield well in excess of a billion barrels of petroleum eventually, though the case for oil shale is not nearly as well established as is that for Canadian tar sands. Also, be aware that the U.S. consumes roughly 20 million barrels per day! That means that every 50 days a billion barrels disappear. In that context Alaskan oil doesn’t mean terribly much.

An even more important fact to keep in mind is that U.S. oil production has been steadily declining since 1969. That opening up the Alaska Wildlife Preserve will reverse this decline and re-establish energy independence is highly unlikely, so unlikely that determined advocacy for this position should be sufficient to destroy the credibility of the advocate.

Bush and Cheney both worked in the oil industry and make a habit of surrounding themselves with its representatives. They simply must know that drilling in Alaska is not a real energy policy. The recently disgraced Tom DeLay openly stated that a victory in Alaska would be a deathblow to the environmental movement, and undoubtedly such considerations underlie the Bush program, but that still leaves unanswered the question of how they expect to meet the needs of consumers in the face of steadily rising crude oil prices.

One would have thought that Bush would have acted very aggressively to put Iraqi oil fields into full production, doing whatever it took to stop the sabotage, up to and including displacing the entire population from the region of the southern oil field and establishing a de facto American colony like the old Panama Canal Zone. That he hasn’t done so we find curious.

Rising oil prices more than any single factor have eroded Bush’s once tremendous popularity and put at jeopardy Republican control of the House. One would assume that George Bush would respond to this danger with decisive action, but we see no evidence whatever of a plan.

Of course, the Administration’s saber rattling against Iran which possesses oil resources approximately equal to those of Iraq could be a prelude to an invasion of that nation as well and a subsequent claim upon its vast oil fields, but unless Bush greatly augments U.S. ground forces, it seems unlikely that he would enjoy any more success in tapping Iranian oil than he has in recovering Iraqi crude.

It could be that we have greatly misjudged the American people, however. Quite possibly a campaign to prohibit same sex marriage, restore the teaching of creationism in public school, and criminalize abortion will sufficiently energize the populace that they will willingly endure any and all economic problems occasioned by the end of cheap oil. That may in fact be the energy policy of this Administration. And it may work.

RENEWABLE ENERGY AND INVESTMENT

2006-01-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

RENEWABLE ENERGY AND INVESTMENT
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

We recently received the summary of a study on global investment in renewable energy for 2005. The total reported was $40 billion dollars—scarcely chump change, but nothing like the amount of money that has gone into telecommunications or enterprise information technologies even in the bad days since the Tech Bubble burst.

If we expand energy technology companies to include those touting innovative uses of fossil fuel or nuclear energy, then the total goes up a bit, but in toto the new energy technology field has received a rather disappointing response from the investment community.

We happen to report on industries other than energy so we believe that we can claim a larger perspective. We believe that this perspective affords us some understanding of why investors evince relatively little interest in energy despite the fact that energy concerns are looming so large today.

An example from the information industry is illustrative.

Today we received a flurry of press releases from company we had never previously encountered who were offering various mobile video platforms and services. We have been receiving similar flurries daily since the beginning of this year. No doubt the flurries will intensify because the mobile video industry, even its current embryonic form, has the appearance of bubble in the making.

No one, from what we can determine, has any clear notion of how such a market will develop, but one press release assured us that television programming viewed over two inch screens on hand held battery powered devices will be a far bigger and more influential business than traditional television ever was.

Interestingly, these product and service introductions follow numerous failures in the past. A myriad of mobile video companies, most notably PacketVideo, rose, crashed and burned in the 1999-2000 time frame, while second wave companies such as Enpocket arrived in 2004 and failed to have much of an impact. Now a third wave has arrived and the venture capital firms are in a frenzy.

Parallel with this development are the attempts of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, companies with little or no prior involvement in multimedia, to establish themselves as entertainment “gatekeepers” on the Internet and to redistribute content originally developed for more traditional media.

Again the response of the largely servile technology press has been ecstatic. Such “pervasive branding”, as it’s called constitutes a watershed event, perhaps the most important event in our lifetime. Or perhaps in all of human history.

Decades ago social scientists with an interest in mass media calculated that even with the less efficient content distribution of traditional print and broadcast, most Americans were bombarded with literally thousands of messages on a daily basis. Now, thanks to mobile digital assistants, the bombardment can become more or less constant, like shells falling on the Western Front.

One might be forgiven for thinking that intensifying the consumer’s exposure to messages of various sorts is somewhat less critical than ensuring energy security. After all, electronic messages inevitably diminish when electricity becomes uncertain. The point is, however, that unproven services and products are precisely what attract the greatest amounts of investment. When products or services are established or commoditized, then they are by definition mature markets and thus hard to crack and having limited potential for future revenues.

New energy technologies are in the nature of replacement technologies and in most cases they are unlikely to experience rapid take rates. The sole exception has been fuel cells which at one time were expected to replace batteries in many applications and to internal combusion as a power source for automobiles. Accordingly, fuel cells attracted a good deal of investment in the late nineties.

Technologies concerned with heavy duty infrastructure or large scale transportation applications are simply not likely to be quickly adopted, however, and hence they are equally unlikely to arouse venture capitalists.

Our prediction is that the information industries will continue to be focus of tech investors for the indefinite future. Energy will get its share of investment, but it will be a relatively small share.

HYDROGEN AND SYNGAS AND OTHER STUFF

2006-01-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

BY DANIEL C. SWEENEY, PhD

It’s been awhile since we’ve made an entry, not that there isn’t anything to discuss in the world of new energy technologies. It’s just that we’ve been so busy trying to complete our monumental study of hydrogen generation that we’ve had scant time for bloviating... or blogging.

But before we mention some of our recent findings, we would like to share the fruits of a recent brainstorming session.

While the topic of this blog is energy, we occasionally venture into other areas. One of these is American politics.

At this point enquiring minds are moved to speculate as to who will succeed George W. Bush three years from now when he completes his second term. (We’re assuming he won’t defy the Constitution and run for a third term or simply appoint himself president for life.) While there does not appear to be any clear front runner in the Republican ranks, we are also assuming that the same machine that catapulted George Bush to victory twice will prove equally adept the next time around, thus assuring that Tom DeLay’s vision of a permanent Republican majority is realized. Still they will have to choose someone to run. You can’t have another Republican administration without an actual candidate.

We have long believed that dynastic tendencies would obtain and that Jeb Bush would be the anointed successor, but given the accumulating mound of Bush baggage that George would be bequeathing any other Bush, we’re not entirely sure that Jeb would prove viable, especially if George is unable to elevate his poll numbers above the 50% point through the remainder of his tenure. That leaves a large coterie of non-royal wannabes vying for throne, including John McCain, Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert, Sam Brownback, Condoleeza Rice, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Guiliani, to name only the most prominent.

Determining which of these worthies will receive the scepter is difficult. McCain did not find favor with Republican kingmakers five years ago, and he is even more of loose cannon today. In spite of his generally high poll ratings he looks like a loser to us. Frist and Hastert have been dogged by scandals and inopportune remarks. Moreover, Frist has earned the special enmity of Felis Domesticus and the friends thereof. As for Santorum, he may not win re-election to the Senate. Should he lose, he’s finished politically. Brownback is relatively little known outside his state and needs to gain national stature. We wouldn’t count him out, out but he doesn’t look like a front runner. Rudy is very well known, but might not appeal to the rural fundamentalist voting block. The fact that he’s been out of office for a long time, doesn’t help either. Condi has no real constituency that we can determine and is shrill, humorless, and exceedingly ugly. The fact that lesbian rumors swirl about her is no advantage either. Mitt Romney could have a shot at, but he’s not that visible on the national level and his Mormon faith might work against him. Most Christian fundamentalists look upon Mormons as dangerous rivals, and it’s hard to imagine the Christian Coalition rousing the troops to vote for this guy.

So who’s it gonna be? We think we have the answer.

Karl Rove.

We hear incredulous gasps, but why not? Karl is incredibly popular with the right wing base, and is widely considered the smartest political operative of all time. Why does he need to fill the role of the court eunuch to some driveling emperor? Why can’t he be emperor himself? Eliminate the middle man. Practically no one would disagree that he’s ten times smarter than George Bush could ever hope to be, and at least three times smarter than any of the other people we’ve mentioned. Why not put him in charge? He pretty much is already, and maybe the reason things aren’t going better is that he lacks absolute power. We hereby nominate Karl Rove for president. He looks like a winner to us. He’ll have to lose that “Turd Blossom” moniker, however. It’s not exactly like Old Hickory or Honest Abe.

Incidentally, we believe that Karl should get an early start. We would suggest a reality show to raise his already considerable visibility. Something between Donald’s Trump’s The Apprentice and The West Wing. Karl could train young operatives in dirty tricks, and right wing notables like Pat Robertson, Arnold Swartzenegger, and Bruce Willis could make guest appearances. Fox Network would have a major hit on its hands if it gave the show the green light.

Syngas

Enough politics and back to the dirty business of energy. What’s next on the international agenda? Syngas. If you are old and decrepid like ourselves, you perhaps remember a film from the nineteen sixties entitled The Graduate about a young man at loose ends (no one ever makes films about old men at loose ends). The young man in question is approached by a friend of his father’s at a graduation party who suggests a career option with a single word. “Plastics.” We say, syngas.

Syngas is a noxious mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Exact proportions vary and are not particularly important so long as it’s mostly hydrogen. Syngas can be made by heating coal to a gas without igniting it or treating natural gas with superheated steam. It’s also possible to gasify biomass to produce it.

Syngas has already been subject to one mighty, protracted boom. Back in the early 1800s entrepreneurs started making it from coal and piping it to private houses and factories and street lamps where it served as a fuel for gaslights, the ancestors of electric lighting. Suddenly the world was bright at night.

So what’s that have to do with today?

It turns out that many of the industrial processes involving natural gas will work just as well or better with syngas. Syngas can be easily transformed into ammonia, methanol, even gasoline with further processing, and can be used for industrial heating, though it’s not so good for residential use because of the carbon monoxide content.

Syngas made from coal has a bright future because natural gas prices have been rising steadily and steeply for the last five years, and because China’s and India’s increasing demands for energy will compel them to utilize the one fossil fuel resource they possess in abundance, coal. Syngas represents a relatively clean way of utilizing coal and recommends itself on those grounds.

Syngas is not a long term answer to the world’s energy problems, but it’s much more likely to figure prominently in the mid term than is hydrogen. Several syngas turbine generators are already on the market whereas no one is making a hydrogen turbine, a good indicator of where the world is really going.

Syngas is not going to happen overnight on a major scale. Absent very stringent regulations, most coal fired generating plants are not going to want to switch for some pretty obvious reasons. Current coal fired plants use powdered coal to heat steam to run Rankine turbines. Syngas, on the other hand, is used in Brayton turbines that are very similar to those employed in natural gas electrical plants, and in jet aircraft for that matter. No one wants to pay for swapping out equipment. In China, however, where syngas will figure both in liquid fuel production and in the creation of additional electrical generation capacity, the changes will happen much more quickly.

AIRBORNE – DECLINING FOSSIL FUEL RESERVES AND THE FUTURE OF AIR TRAVEL

2005-12-06T17:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
by Daniel Sweeney, Ph.D

Most of those concerned with our energy future, at least those who assume that business as usual cannot be maintained indefinitely, give relatively little thought to air travel in the years to come. Everyone just seems to assume that the same kinds of jets that take us hither and yon to almost anywhere in the world will continue to do so for the next fifty years, if not forever.

It is a curious fact, that aircraft, the most recent form of human transport to be developed, are in many ways the most conservative in design. The first jet passenger plane, the ill fated and dangerous British Comet, began flying more than fifty years ago. If you saw one on the runway at an airport today you wouldn’t give it a second look. The basic design looks entirely modern. It is also interesting to note that the first passenger jets of the nineteen fifties were just about as fast as their modern descendents. There just hasn’t been much visible progress.

The same is true of private aircraft by and large. They look like aircraft from the thirties, forties, and fifties, and generally use thoroughly antiquated engine designs. Only in the areas of small experimental kit aircraft and private jets have there been much obvious innovation. Military aircraft have advanced to be sure, but still only in an evolutionary sense. Jet fighters and bombers look much the same as they have for decades. The main difference has been slightly improved materials technology and far more sophisticated electronics and weapons systems.

The one area where considerable improvement has occurred is perhaps the least visible. Jet engines have manifested double digit improvements in fuel efficiency over the past thirty years or so and will probably continue to improve in this respect. Which will be to their advantage in a fossil fuel constrained world, but may not ensure business as usual.

Coping Strategies

Jet passenger planes use thousands of gallons of jet aviation fuel, a type of kerosene, in their transcontinental flights. At projected mid term pricing of several dollars a gallon, that makes these birds extremely expensive to operate. A jet airplane, for all its improvements in efficiency, has the lowest energy efficiency of any common form of transport.

If, as we expect, fossil fuel prices continue to escalate, airlines will be forced to raise their prices in order to continue to operate. If, at the same time, fuel prices increases are sufficient to affect the overall economy adversely, air travel could begin to revert to what it was prior to the advent of jet aviation in the fifties, a mode of travel that was priced out of reach for most Americans. Determining the overall effects of restrictions in long distance travel is a difficult undertaking, but it is safe to say that such a change would not be welcomed. That honeymoon in Hawaii might have to be reset for Palm Springs. And that the hospitality industry would suffer enormously is virtually a certainty.
So what are the possibilities of maintaining relatively low cost air travel in the face of nearly certain increases in the real cost of jet fuel?

We see three several ways in which the aircraft industry could adapt to significantly elevated fuel costs, some rather likely, and some quite far fetched. But that it will have to adapt is not in doubt. If it does not, it will atrophy terribly.

There are many new technologies in development for increasing the efficiency of turbo jet and fan jet engines used in most passenger aircraft. Schemes have been proposed for equipping the turbine or fan blades with actuators for changing pitch, which could improve efficiency by over ten percent. More efficient combustion cycles are certainly possible, and Pratt Whitney is doing a lot of work on perfecting a pulse detonation turbojet which promises to be vastly more efficient than the current art.

In the area of smaller aircraft we see two stroke diesels, just now being introduced, prevailing by virtue of their high power to weight ratios and excellent fuel economy. The fact that they don’t required leaded av gas also works in their favor.

NASA has sponsored a lot of research on what is known as boundary layer control, that is the control of air flow near the surface of the lifting surfaces. Normally the boundary layer, an air mass which adheres to the wing and thereby lessens drag, begins to separate well before the back of the wing thereby creating drag inducing turbulence. Suction holes, forced air directed over the rear flaps, and rotating cylinders placed at the front of the wings are all capable of delaying boundary layer separation and improving aerodynamics. Such schemes are not new, dating back to the fifties and even earlier, but in the past they were difficult to implement successfully using the cut and try aircraft design techniques prevalent before the age of computer aided design. Now they are possible.

Even more radical techniques have been proposed involving actuators and deformable surfaces on wings that optimize their shape according to the speed at which the aircraft is traveling. These are probably further out but could begin to appear in another decade.

Another approach, one that seems to be easier to implement, is the blended wing or lifting body design, originally developed by Vincent Burnelli, an American aeronautical engineer, in the nineteen thirties. Lifting bodies are related to flying wings where the wings and fuselage form a single lifting surface, but lifting bodies tend to have elongated forms and do not suffer from the longitudinal instability that plagued the old flying wings. Unquestionably lifting bodies can achieve mush lower drag than conventional aircraft and they are up to 50% lighter for an equivalent payload. They are also structurally strong and scale to larger sizes than conventional aircraft.

Lifting body designs have been built, albeit on a largely experimental basis, and there are couple of kit aircraft out there you can buy that embody the concept, but to date no commercial design has made it to market.

Boeing currently has a program for developing a 700 passenger blended wing design, a project specifically prompted by concerns about future fuel prices. The plane would make extensive use of advanced composites in place of sheet metal and would represent a considerable advance over the current art.

A final possibility, which we consider somewhat remote, is the emergence of WIG (wing in ground effect) aircraft, which we discussed briefly in a previous post. WIGs easily scale to enormous sizes which makes for reduced operational cost; they are more fuel efficient than conventional aircraft by a factor of four or five. They are somewhat slower than today’s passenger jets but can probably be operated at speeds as high as 400 knots. As we indicated earlier, no WIGs are currently in full production, although a number of nations, including China, South Korea, and Japan have ambitious government sponsored program for commercialization.

Fossil Fuel Forever?

The possibility that fossil fuels will be superseded as a power source in aircraft is pretty remote at this time. Fuel cells in an airplane are almost out of the question, and hydrogen jets, while possible, present real problems in terms of practicality. The most likely change in fuel in future aircraft is the phasing out of leaded high octane av gas in favor of kerosene in propeller driven planes.

Boeing had fuel cell program, which now appears to be pretty much moribund, and a kit builder in France fabricated an all electric airplane that was to be fitted with a fuel cell. The project has never been completed. Aerovironment actually constructed an airplane with reversible fuel cells which used solar panels to generate hydrogen via electrolysis. That airplane, incidentally, established the altitude record for non rocket powered aircraft.

So why not fuel cell power plants? They’re just too heavy, not to mention the problems in storing hydrogen on board, problems that grow worse when one attempts to take high pressure tanks to very high altitudes.

Hydrogen powered jets have been built, and the possibility of reviving them has been studied by a European aircraft consortium. But even with liquid hydrogen storage, the only really practical storage method in an airplane, the amount of space required for fuel storage cuts down on payload severely and can effect aerodynamic efficiency. Couple those disadvantages to the high cost of hydrogen and the inefficiency of freezing it and you have a nonstarter.

There is, however, one area of aviation where hydrogen has more than a fighting chance, provided national governments and aircraft manufacturers ever get serious about it, and that is suborbital flight.

Boeing launched a program called HyperSoar for constructing a suborbital airplane which would store liquid hydrogen in it delta wings. The hydrogen would serve not only to fuel the aircraft but to cool its skin at the 7,000mph speeds at which the plane would travel.

Other suborbitals have been designed by various visionaries and aircraft manufacturers, but HyperSoar represents some really fresh thinking that could lead to actual production.
HyperSoar would fly between 100,000 and 130,000 feet. One hundred thousand feet can in aeronautical terms be considered the edge of the atmosphere. Above that altitude there is not enough air to provide lift for an airplane’s wings. So how does HyperSoar climb to 130,000ft.? HyperSoar executes a series of bounds as it flies. It launches into the region beyond the atmosphere in an arc and then re-enters the atmosphere where its scramjet engines resume operation and accelerate the plane to the point where it can commence another bound. While this sounds kind of like a roller coaster ride, Boeing officials claim that the accelerations and decelerations would be gentle. Five leaps would be required to cross the Pacific with a transit time of about twenty minutes.

Crazy? The U.S. Air Force and Federal Express don’t think so. They’re both pouring money into the project. Boeing says that if the design proves feasible only one platform will be constructed and that the military and civilian versions will have the same flight capabilities. The military version will have surveillance and/or weapons systems, however.

HyperSoar is projected to achieve reasonable fuel economy as well as attaining unprecedented high speeds. But if it happens at all, it’s probably a good two decades off. Nor would it have much of a payload. Preliminary analyses by Boeing engineers indicate that suborbitals do not scale to large size. That means that they will only be used to carry very high value cargoes and very wealthy passengers.

We also see the possibility that supersonic rather than hypersonic airplanes will emerge in the private jet space. Several aircraft manufacturers are developing designs including Gulfstream, and fuselage configurations have been devised that greatly minimize sonic booms. Most such airplanes would probably be purchased by charter jet companies not by private individuals. Certainly not at projected prices in excess of $50 million apiece.

Personal Aviation – Hope of a Resurrection

The ownership of certified personal aircraft is at an all time low in the U.S. Per capita ownership was higher in the nineteen thirties, and many of the thousands of airfields built back then in anticipation of the mass produced airplane go unused.

The reason for the unpopularity of airplanes is in no way mysterious. A new certified airplane runs about a quarter million dollars minimum, the price of large yacht, and lessons to operate it can run into the five figures. In constant dollars airplanes are more expensive than they’ve ever been, and they’re not much improved over what they were fifty years ago.

Private airplanes are so costly because they’re hand made. Chicken and egg. No sense building a mass production facility if you’ve defined your market as the top one tenth of one percent, and no way to get a bigger market unless you drastically reduce the cost of production. There is no reason why aircraft couldn’t sell for the price of a luxury automobile if mass produced, and in fact they were mass produced in World War II. But those techniques never migrated into the civilian sector.

Of course there’s the problem of operating aircraft and dealing with crowded airspaces in the event of a mass market. Most people who’ve thought seriously on the subject assume that some kind of massive automated air traffic control system would have to be initiated and that the operation of aircraft would have to be greatly simplified from what it is now. In addition, one would prefer designs that had short take off and landing characteristics and that were highly resistant to stall and instabilities in flight. A fairly foolproof semi-automated fly-by-wire system would be a must.

NASA has published a number of monographs on the subject of expanded personal aviation. It could make for a far more efficient transportation system for travel over distances of less than 500 miles because it would eliminate the delays of using large airports, but the expense of launching such a system would be immense and the receptiveness of the public would be difficult to determine. Currently, the most popular small aircraft in the U.S. are noncertified ultralights, largely on the basis of price, but since most are home built, they’re hardly a bridge to the future. Experimental designs such as canard type aircraft abound in the ultralight category, so it could give some indication where personal aviation is ultimately going.

Any expansion of personal aviation would come up against the rising fuel prices that afflict all forms of transport, and, since aircraft are the least efficient of vehicles, the cost of fuel might ultimately prevent such a development.

End Run – Evacuated Tube MagLev

We alluded to this concept briefly in an earlier post. Here we elaborate upon it.

Magnetic levitation transport utilizes opposing magnets to elevate the vehicle and generally also uses magnetic forces to propel the vehicle forward. Several variants exist. Pure maglev systems eliminate friction from the drive train and the rails and thus achieve high energy efficiency and higher speed, available power being held constant.

Several magnetic levitation techniques are well proven—this isn’t blue sky stuff—but the cost of constructing maglev rail systems exceeds that of conventional railroads, at least in the case of the proven designs. Only one commercial system is currently in operating, a single line connecting the port and city of Shanghai constructed by the German TransRapid firm. The system is the pride of the Chinese government, but there are no plans to extend it. Right now it is purely a showcase.

Conventional maglev trains are capable of speeds in the 500mph range but are really only practical up to about 300mph due to noise arising from air turbulence. However, if the train is operated in a tunnel and that tunnel is pumped to a low vacuum, speeds in the thousands of miles per hour become possible. The train becomes like a suborbital only it’s traveling underground.

An evacuated tube maglev system would be enormously expensive to build, but inexpensive to operate. There is no wear out mechanism in either the propulsion or levitation devices and no friction on the skin of the cars. And the energy expenditure required to accelerate them would be far less than that needed to thrust a suborbital 100,000 feet above the earth. In fact it would be considerably less than that required for a conventional jet traveling at subsonic speeds.

What about crossing oceans? A vehicle traveling at 7,000mph is a whole different proposition than one traveling 600mph. You want to go from New York to Paris? You cross the North American continent, then cross the Bering Straits, and proceed across Siberia. In less than two hours you’re there. And if you want to go from New York to Los Angeles, that will take you about fifteen minutes. Distance doesn’t matter anymore. Not when you’re going that fast.

Could this ever happen? Most transportation authorities assume that the world seventy years from now will be just like today but with more Internet and handheld music and video devices. Real out of the box thinking. Everything’s moving at Internet speed and yet everything is going to stay the same. What would such individuals be saying if they could be transported back to 1800? They’d say that ubiquitous railroads or indeed any railroads would be quite impossible. Too capital intensive. Canals and stage coach lines would be the future.

But enough of transportation. The next post will examine fossil fuel from a different angle.

FUTURE TRAVEL

2005-11-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING NONAUTOMOTIVE TRANSPORT AND ENERGY USAGE
by Daniel C. Sweeney, PhD

In the previous post I discussed the various modifications in the power plant of marine vessels that might be made to cope with a continued decline in fossil fuel reserves. I should perhaps mention one further possibility before discussing innovations in hull design which might arguably be of greater utility in this regard.

There are advocates, though they are not many, for the use of nuclear reactors to drive steam turbines aboard ships. Nuclear submarines of course have used such propulsion since the nineteen fifties as have some surface naval vessels and one civilian freighter, the ill fated Savannah. There would appear to be almost insurmountable technical problems with the scheme, however, putting aside the apprehensions of the public over more extensive use of nuclear power.

The reactors used in nuclear subs are not heavily shielded all around. Full shielding would be prohibitively heavy. Instead the reactor is placed some distance from the crew, and partial shielding prevents direct emissions into the crew’s quarters. Much radiation is allowed to escape into the surrounding ocean, but since the ship is in a constant rapid motion, the ship’s wake functions as an effective barrier so far as the crew is concerned. Such a mode of operation would scarcely be acceptable on the surface of the ocean in crowded shipping lanes or near port facilities.

Possibly a triggered isomer reactor, also known as an energy amplifier, could be used on shipboard. These devices, developed by Nobel laureate, Carlo Rubia, and still experimental at this time, are incapable of runaway reactions as are conventional reactors and simply don’t emit harmful radiation at the same level. Nevertheless, this is a very dark horse.

We think the more likely changes in ship design will involve the form of the hull. Conventional ships operate in what is known as the displacement mode, pushing aside a volume of water equal to the volume of that portion of the ship’s hull that is submerged. The displaced water creates frictional drag as it slides past the hull and also forms a wave cycle whose period is dictated by the speed of the ship. The length of wave from peak to peak is dictated in turn by the speed of passage, with higher speeds producing longer waves. When the length of the wave is roughly equal to the length of the vessel, the vessel is effectively trapped in a trough between two crests and can only travel at the speed of those crests. Most ships cannot effectively climb their own bow waves, so the length and speed of those waves imposes an upper limit on ship speed known as the hull speed. Once a ship begins to overtake its own bow wave it can effectively go no faster in normal circumstances.

Within the context of conventional hull design there isn’t much one can do to reduce losses from skin friction which normally increases with speed. But there are some unconventional approaches that promise a way around the hull speed impasse.

Unconventional hull designs include super slender hulls, multi-hulls, air cavity types, planing and semi-planing hulls, hydrofoils, SWATHs, SLICEs, hovercraft, and surface effect vessels. Various combinations of the above have also been attempted.

Super slender hulls are just what you think they are—hulls that are very narrow in relationship to length. Such hulls create less resistance and have higher hull speeds than conventional displacement craft of the same length. They also create relatively small bow waves that are fairly easy to climb. Their drawback is that they’re often too long for conventional docking facilities if they’re built with adequate freight carrying capacity. Incidentally, the concept is not new. Viking ships had super slender hulls as did some racing sailboats built in the late nineteenth century, but the concept has not never seen extensive expression in monohull ships and boats in this century. For some current concepts, visit www.guydesigngroup.fi. Guy Lonngren, the president of the firm, is a brilliant industrial designer who is also a naval architect. While you’re on the site take a look as well at the beautiful and innovative One 40 sailing yacht.

Multihulls, our next group, include catamarans and trimarans, the latter having three hulls. Most such vessels are actually two or three super slender hulls joined together by a bridge deck and they have all of the advantages of super slender hull plus superior stability and sea keeping capabilities. Nevertheless, the concept has not caught on in merchant vessels although a few small multi-hull destroyers have been constructed in European navies. Bridge decks are fine for pleasure craft or even for warships, but in a merchant ship such a design entails placement of cargo well above the waterline which tends to destabilize the vessel.

Air cavity ships have the virtue of resembling ordinary displacement hulls in all but one respect. The bottom of the hull is flat rather than V-shaped and is provided with side and rear walls for containing a pressured air mass which is pumped into the resulting cavity. Approximately 5% of the ship’s power is required to maintain the cavity, but the drag reduction is on the order of 50%.

Full sized air cavity merchant ships have been built by the DK Group, the well known European shipyard, but the design has been slow to catch on. Merchant shippers tend to be very conservative.

Planing and semiplaning hulls are ubiquitous in recreational speedboats and enable the vessel to exceed its hull speed by in effect climbing its own bow wave and skimming along on the flattened planing area toward the stern of the vessel. Planing hulls can attain very high speeds, but the hulls are inefficient at low speeds when they operate in displacement mode, and much power is normally required to achieve the transition from displacement to planing mode.

Recently, a number of similar designs from M-Ships, Wally Yachts, and ICE Marine appear to have solved the low speed inefficiency problem in planing vessels, however.

All of these vessels make use of what are known as lifting rails, short wing-like structures jutting out from the sides of single slender displacement hull. Lifting rails themselves are nothing new, but in these designs the tips of the rails curve down to meet the water and serve as outriggers as well as enclosing a volume of air in a tapering tunnel that merges with the hull at the extreme rear of the vessel.

When the vessel gets underway, a waves form on either side of the bow as in any conventional displacement vessel, but, unconventionally, the waves enter the side tunnels formed by the lifting rails. As the speed of the vessel increases, the waves grow in height until they touch the upper surface of the tunnel and begin to lift the vessel so that progressively less of the displacement hull is actually in the water. The top of the tunnel is flattened and forms a planing surface, but since this surface is not engaged until the boat is moving at speed, it doesn’t slow it down as does a conventional planing hull. In other words the V-bottom contacts the water at low speeds where it is appropriate and the flat planing surface comes into play at high speeds where it is appropriate.

Such vessels also derive a certain amount of aerodynamic lift from air rushing under the bridge and into the tapered tunnel. The air becomes pressurized in the tapered cavity and tends to push the central hull out of the water, reducing hull resistance. So far this type of hull has only been used in yachts and fast patrol craft.

Our next type of radical hull design is represented by the SWATH (small water area twin hull) and the SLICE. The SWATH is a catamaran supported by submerged pontoons which communicate with the hulls by means of narrow, wave-piercing struts. The submerged pontoons do not themselves create waves, only the struts do, that and they produce relatively small waves, smaller than would be the case with a super slender hull vessel of similar displacement. Furthermore, the deeply submerged hulls are not subject to slamming by waves, and a SWATH vessel is generally much more stable than a conventional ship of equal displacement. But for all their virtues SWATHS have not won many adherents. Only about fifty of the vessels currently ply the seas.

A SLICE (the term is not an acronym and refers to the tendency of the hulls to slice through the water) is a refinement of the SWATH idea where four torpedo shaped pontoons are used to support the vessel instead of the two used in SWATHs. The four pod scheme reduces hull resistance very significantly and thus improves top speed and fuel economy. The SLICE was invented by Navatek a Hawaiian naval architecture firm. So far only a single experimental vessel has been constructed to our knowledge. Many technical analyses have been published on SLICE designs, however, and they tend to bear out Navatek’s claims.

Recently Navatek has developed what they claim is an improvement on the SLICE which the company calls a midfoil. This combines two very peculiarly shaped SLICE pods up front along with one large underwater wing or hydrofoil near the center of the vessel and one small moveable T-shaped foil at the bow. Navatek has published no technical papers to date on the exact hydrodynamics of the hull, but the company claims that the new hull design produces lower resistance and thus better fuel economy than any other hull shape. Only one experimental vessel has been built to date. One naturally tends to be suspicious of sweeping claims for revolutionary improvements in performance in any area of technology, but Navatek holds a formidable reputation in the field of naval architecture and has landed many lucrative naval contracts. As diesel grows dearer and dearer we think that more people will be looking at the midfoil.

Our next unorthodox hull design, the hydrofoil, has been kicking around for over a century. A hydrofoil is essentially a water wing and it works by lifting the hull free of the surface of the water and thus eliminating all resistance except for the drag of the hydrofoils themselves and their supporting struts.

Many design variants have been developed over the years including T-sections, ladder foils, V-foils, and surface piercing foils to name a few. Hydrofoils certainly work, they’re not a discredited concept, but they have their limitations. Most designs do not perform adequately in rough water, and almost all maintain high efficiency over only a fairly narrow range of speeds. Like planing boats, most hydrofoil types require considerable power to pass the hump speed where the wing begins to generate appreciable lift just as most airplanes expend maximum power during liftoff. Above a certain speed, usually around 40 knots, most hydrofoils begin to cavitate, that is, to generate air bubbles around the foils which sharply reduce lift and can damage the foils as well through the turbulence they create. Some hydrofoils, termed supercavitating hydrofoils, have been designed to continue to produce lift past the point of cavitation, but efficiency is sacrificed, and these designs have not found much of a market. Possibly the hybrid midfoil and a related design known as the HSYCAT will win greater acceptance than more traditional concepts, but it’s too soon to tell.

Hovercraft we can dismiss in a few words. Top speeds are limited, and rough water performance is poor, as is fuel economy. The noise generated by the air propellers tends to be objectionable as well. Hovercraft ferries will continue to operate but we do not expect to see hovercrafts much used in commercial shipping.

Finally we come to surface effect vessels, the strangest and perhaps the most intriguing of all the unconventional hull types.

A surface effect vessel makes use of what is known as the wing-in-ground-effect (WIG) principle. This principle has it that the lift of an airfoil increases greatly as it approaches the ground. A vessel operating at elevations where wing in ground effect is present will require much less energy to maintain itself aloft than an aircraft flying out of ground effect and thus can achieve much greater fuel economy than a conventional airplane—four or five times as much, best case. Economy will be considerably poorer than is the case for a displacement hull traveling below hull speed, however.

Wing-in-ground-effect craft fly fairly close to the surface of the water, how close will depend upon the wingspan. Boeing’s proposed Pelican which has a projected wingspan of 500 feet will fly fifty feet above the water. Personal WIGs may fly less than a meter above the surface.

WIGs are driven by aircraft propellers and use air rudders. Some use ailerons and elevators to trim themselves in flight while others do not.

WIGs get much better fuel economy than planing watercraft, and personal WIGs can achieve speeds well in excess of 100 knots with engines of just slightly over 100hp. Larger WIGs are believed to be capable of speeds in the hundreds of knots. Some WIGs are capable of conventional flight.

Because of their superior weight carrying abilities, WIGs can be scaled up to the size of small ships and can carry the same kind of bulky cargo container as merchant vessels though at considerably greater speeds.

Many different designs are extant. The tandem WIG developed by Gunther Jorg resembles a boat and flies at very low altitudes while the Russian Ekranoplane, the earliest successful design, definitely looks like an airplane. Most current designs look much more like aircraft than boats though they all have relatively short, stubby wings. Most are quite substantially built, for a WIG can come in contact with the waves and needs to be able to stand up to heavy seas. The three point hydroplanes used for ocean racing are close kin to WIGs and operate almost entirely in ground effect with only the small planing surfaces at the stern of vessel remaining in contact with the water.

While a number of companies currently build WIGs on a special order basis, no one has ever launched a production model, and all of the projects for constructing large freight carriers have come to naught.

WIGs occupy a niche between large aircraft and fast ocean going vessels. While they are somewhat slower than jets carrying air freight, they are much more economical to operate and if jet fuel prices become sufficiently elevated WIGs could gain a foothold in commercial transport. Navies have been eyeing WIGs for years, and if Boeing succeeds in building the Pelican, the U.S. military will be a likely customer.

In our next post we will explore air travel in the era of diminishing fossil fuel.

HOW WE'RE GOING TO GET AROUND

2005-11-10T20:04:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

NON PERSONAL TRANSPORT IN AN ENERGY CONSTRAINED FUTURE
by Daniel Sweeney, PhD

Most discussions of future transportation systems focus more or less exclusively on automobiles, and, for good reason. More fossil fuel is consumed by personal transportation than by any form of public or commercial transport. Still, in aggregate, air and sea transport as well as heavy wheeled traffic involving trucks or trains account for almost half of the total petroleum consumption within the transportation sector, which itself accounts for the bulk of total petroleum consumption worldwide. So, obviously, nonautomotive transport matters in terms of its sheer impact on resource consumption, leaving aside its vital importance to commerce and to the maintenance of an industrial civilization.

Obviously, heavy transport is profoundly effected by rising crude oil prices, and, if we assume that a decline in fossil fuel recovery is imminent or already underway, then we are compelled to ask the question, what sort of coping strategies can we expect in these other transportation segments? Will they be going to hydrogen and fuel cells as will the auto industry—if the major manufacturers are to be believed?

Let’s start with maritime traffic because collectively ships and boats are the biggest users of petroleum after automobiles.

You won’t find very many ship builders or naval architects talking about fuel cells or the hydrogen economy. True, the HDW ship works in Germany has built a handful of naval submarines utilizing PEM fuel cells, but that’s scarcely a large market. In the areas of merchant shipping, fishing vessels, or surface naval vessels no one is seriously considering hydrogen or fuel cells at this time nor is anyone doing any prototyping. A few U.S. Coast Guard vessels have molten carbonate fuel cells on board for supplying auxiliary power, but the power output of even the largest of such devices is far too meager to drive a ship’s propulsion system, and the cost is highly disadvantageous compared to existing diesel power plants. And, in any event, shipboard molten carbonate fuel cells run on diesel and are scarcely pollution free.

Interestingly, there is movement among designers of both naval vessels and cruise ships to utilize hybrid electric drives where a diesel generator provides electrical energy for both propulsion and the operation of various other electrical systems on the ship. Such hybrid systems are in fact somewhat more energy efficient than parallel plants where diesel engines drive the propellers directly and diesel auxiliary power units run the ship’s generator. Incidentally, such hybrid drives are scarcely new. During the World War II era and for some time after, the majority of large naval vessels used hybrid electric drive, although steam turbines rather than diesel piston engines provided the heat engine component in such systems.

Could fuel cells or other novel propulsion systems gain at least a foothold in the future?

I am doubtful. The large two stroke diesels used in the biggest ships are approximately 50% efficient today, on a par with fuel cells, in fact, and they are very much a known quantity. Replacing them with an unknown quantity requiring bulky hydrogen storage that will occupy valuable cargo space seems an unlikely eventuality.

Still, diesel prices are likely to continue to rise and so shippers will face a dilemma. That 50% efficiency figure is unlikely to be significantly improved upon, and the only other marine power plant in use today, namely the gas turbine, is much less efficient unless it is combined with recuperation.

So what happens?

More diesel will likely be produced from natural gas in the future, but with natural gas prices rising almost in tandem with petroleum prices, that’s scarcely a solution. Biodiesel is a possibility, and it may be utilized on a much larger scale in the future than at present, but because it is mostly produced by energy intensive agriculture involving oil seed crops, I’m not sure that it will ever be inexpensive.

I see a remote possibility in a new technology developed by a Sacramento based company calling itself Clean Energy Systems. Clean Energy is a company that was literally founded by rocket scientists, refugees from the moribund U.S. space program. The Clean Energy team has devised a combustor that works equally well with low or high grade coal or various kinds of biomass and produces a combination of high pressure steam and carbon dioxide. The company claims 60% energy utilization without recuperation, which, if true, is quite remarkable. Clean Energy is aiming at stationary power utilities, not the shipping industry, but I see no reason that the technology could not be employed in maritime applications. Up until the mid twentieth century the majority of merchant ships used steam turbines for propulsion, and they’re still used in liquid natural gas tanker ships today. The infrastructure exists for building them and if they can be made to outperform diesel piston engines and to utilize cheaper fuel while producing less air pollution, then why not? How ironic if the age of steam recommenced on the high seas?

Another possible future power plant is the Jirnov turbine, also known as the vortex turbine. Jirnovs were developed in the old Soviet Union by an inventor of the same name emigrated to the United States fifteen years ago and founded a company named General Vortex Energy aimed at promoting his invention. The Jirnov differs from conventional gas turbines in utilizing a special fuel injection system that generates a vortical movement in the fuel and is said to promote more complete combustion and better than 60% efficiency. The U.S. Navy has provided the company with a grant to further the development of the design for ship propulsion, and if the project is successful we may eventually see such designs in merchant ships and even recreational watercraft. In the past, navies have tended to embrace advanced propulsion concepts before civilian shippers, and a design win in the U.S. Navy could prove highly significant.

In any case, we don’t see heat engines being displaced by fuel cells or other power sources any time in the foreseeable future. We would expect that various attempts to introduce modernized sailing vessels would have a better chance of success than new forms of chemical propulsion.

In fact a number of ships have been constructed using wing sails in lieu of traditional fabric sails in recent years, the best known of which was the Cousteau family’s famous Calypso II. These designs have considerably more lift than conventional sails and produce less heeling, that is, the tendency of the sail to push the vessel over on its side when sailing into the wind. A company calling itself SkySails, GmbH. and headquartered in Germany has taken another approach, utilizing a gigantic computer controlled kite for motive power. Many kite sails for boats have been built over the years on an experimental basis, and they provide for both superior performance and greater safety than either old fashioned fabric sails or more modern wing sails. Such sails are favored by some wind surfers as well, and have long been commercially available in that market. Kite sails are somewhat difficult to launch and recover, however, and no one has previously attempted to construct such a device for a full sized ship.

SkySails is introducing the system now and claims to have presold a number of the kites to manufacturers of super-yachts. So far the company has garnered no sails involving merchant vessels.

The company claims to be able to retrofit the sails on most ships and boats and so the design doesn’t necessarily have to attract ship builders in order to succeed. SkySails also claims that the sails can generate close to two horsepower of traction per square meter of surface, an amazing feat if true. Their largest sails are said to produce speeds in excess of thirteen knots in ships of thousands of tons of displacement and to offer performance equivalent to that of large two stroke diesels rated at tens of thousands of horsepower. Because of the variability of the wind, the SkySail would provide auxiliary power. The company expects that the kite could reduce fuel consumption by 50%.

We do not predict any widespread use of wind power in merchant shipping any time soon, however. Schemes for the re-introduction of wind have been rife for decades, and while some governments, notably Denmark and Japan, have sponsored extensive research in this area, ship builders have demurred. Wind was used as an auxiliary power source in ships fairly extensively right up into the nineteen twenties and there are men still alive who can remember the problems with such vessels. Sure, the sails saved fuel, but separate crews were often required for sail handling and engine maintenance and labor costs could nullify any savings in coal or diesel.

To be sure, a SkySail differs considerably from traditional sailing rigs. Launch, recovery, and management of the device are largely automated, and, if promotional videos are to be believed, do not require large skilled crews. And the SkySail is powerful. We saw a heavy steel tender being dragged along at a good twelve knots. If fuel prices keep inching up, who knows?

HYDROGEN MAY BE STUCK IN THIRD GEAR

2005-10-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

HOW TO ABORT A TECHNOLOGY TRANSITION
by Daniel Sweeney, Ph.D

In as much as I am still busily engaged in preparing my monumental hydrogen report, hydrogen and the possibility of a hydrogen economy are much on my mind. Here’s what I’ve been thinking.

The hydrogen economy, such as it is, is not shaping up like previous energy transitions, and I find that ominous.

The world at large and the United States in particular have been through a number of energy transitions in the past—enough so that it’s possible to discern a pattern, at least over the course of the last couple of centuries. Earlier transitions, I must say, are harder to read. Windpower, for instance, was discovered thousands of years ago, and for thousands of more years was used for nothing but to fill the sails of ships and boats. Water mills are only a couple of thousand years old, but they languished all through antiquity, only becoming widespread in the Middle Ages. Internal combustion engines begin with the age of firearms (the gun barrel is a cylinder and the bullet is a nonreciprocating piston), but for four hundred years they were confined to guns.

Then, circa 1800, it all began to change. If we look at energy transitions since the beginning of the nineteenth century we have to marvel at how rapidly they have occurred. In 1810 there was a literal handful of steam engines in the U.S. Ten years later hundreds of steamboats plied the North American river system the Hudson to the Mississippi. In 1880 Edison set up his first DC electrical generating plant. Fifteen years later there were thousands of them all over the country, in fact there were over twenty electrical generating companies in Chicago alone.

If one wants a more recent example, let’s look at the electrical utilities in the nineteen seventies. Following the first oil crisis, America’s utility executives decided that a transition to nuclear was in order. In less than ten years hundreds of plants were built, contributing in toto to about 20% of U.S. electrical capacity. Of course NIMBY and Three Mile Island eventually stopped the nukes in their tracks, but still one can’t deny that they had momentum.

Now let’s look at fuel cells and the hydrogen economy. How fast is that going? Well, there are all kinds of pilot projects today, just as there have been for the last five years. Hydrogen filling stations near international airports…a couple of hundred fuel cell powered buses and cars sent out to enthusiastic agencies and consumers for beta testing…lots of favorable press…beta going very well…first production run expected next year…phased introduction…slight delay…new pilot…improved fuel cells…new storage tanks for the hydrogen filling stations…fuel cell powered jet ski—now that’s cool…fuel cell powered motor scooter—production begins in ’07…scratch that, ’09…slight delay, fourth quarter, ’09…more fleets, more buses…U.S. Forest Service very happy with fifth generation fuel cell powered car…good news, excellent news, very favorable progress, your children will be driving hydrogen powered cars.

Don’t bet on that because that’s not how energy transactions happen. In successful energy transitions there are no pilot projects, no phased introductions, no bullshit. They just happen, and they happen so fast you don’t even see them coming.

All this is very counterintuitive. Hydrogen economy advocates seem so plausible precisely because they plan so thoroughly. They love to produce roadmaps, cost analyses, and highly detailed schemes for integrating hydrogen with the existing fossil fuel regime so that all of the economic powers that be, the auto makers, the electrical utilities, and the construction contractors emerge intact in the new world order.

The problem with this approach is that there are very few historical precedents for it—it simply doesn’t replicate the pattern of successful technology introductions, which tend to be associated with the rise of new corporate giants not the perpetuation of old ones. In fact, entrenched oligopolies seldom promote replacement technologies for the incumbent technology, and they generally only do so when provided with either massive subsidies or with the prospect of realizing huge profits or savings. They’re much more likely to resist change than to embrace it.

The outstanding example of an incumbent promoting what is essentially a replacement technology is RCA’s development and introduction of broadcast television in the nineteen forties. RCA had effectively controlled radio in the twenties, and the company was in the television vanguard twenty years later. And the strategy was clearly extremely successful. Note, however, that RCA neither anticipated nor controlled the introduction of new communication technologies subsequently. Television fit comfortably within the existing advertising supported broadcast model created for radio, and in fact many radio shows and formats migrated successfully to the new medium. More revolutionary notions such as video on demand and video software distribution which could not be supported by the established broadcast model were simply ignored.

A further example is the decision of American aircraft manufacturers and airlines to switch to jets in the late fifties. Jets were faster and cheaper to operate than turboprops, and they made air travel truly the province of everyman rather than a service confined to the wealthy. The major airlines phased out props in less than two years.

The replacement of electromechanical telephone switches with digital switches by the Bell Monopoly in the nineteen sixties is a further example of a wholesale technology change initiated by a monopoly incumbent. Bell, of course, was in a position to pass on costs to the consumer, and it made the change to future proof the network against increases in traffic and the coming of digital data transmissions which Bell scientists anticipated.

But such fundamental transformations are not the norm for obvious reasons. No one wants to spend money on new technologies that might not ultimately turn a profit.

In any case, none of these successful transitions was proceeded by a lot of trials or studies. A decision was made and it was acted upon quickly.

What we have here with hydrogen and fuel cells is much more reminiscent of Ford’s electric car project of the nineties or Chrysler’s automotive turbine of the sixties—lots of hype, lots of tests, and ultimately lots of nothing.

Still, one can’t deny that the auto makers, and, to a lesser extent, the oil companies, have sunk a lot of money into hydrogen—billions in aggregate with lots more budgeted for the future. Why would car companies in either industry act collectively in such a manner if they didn’t think the whole thing was going to succeed?

The only way of arriving any where near an answer is to look at their other research activities. Auto manufacturers are simultaneously researching hybrids, advanced diesels, various fundamental improvements on spark ignition gasoline engines, and hydrogen powered internal combustion engines as well as fuel cells. Fuel cells may get the most publicity but that’s not where all the money is going. What they’re doing is hedging their bets.

And there’s something else going on, something on which I can only speculate.

I think that most of the top executives in the auto companies recognize that fuel cells are actually the dark horse technology, not the one that is most likely to succeed. They may have felt differently ten years ago, but the lack of progress in fuel cell design has to be reckoned with today. The investment community sure as hell isn’t supporting fuel cells like it used to, and auto executives are not ignorant of the larger business community.

So if not fuel cells, what, and where does all of the auto company fuel cell research fit in?

Here’s what I think is going on:

I think a hidden consensus is emerging that the probable future of the automobile is some sort of plug-in hybrid. This would use a combination of internal combustion engine and batteries just like current hybrids, but would be able to store sufficient electrical energy that it could cruise for a considerable distance without utilizing the ICE engine at all. Such a vehicle might use other forms of energy storage as well. Certain types of advanced flywheels seem promising by virtue of their very high energy density, and ultracapacitors could augment the batteries in storing electrical energy, though batteries and internal combustion engines would form the foundation.

What kind of batteries? Certainly not the lead acid and nickel metal hydride types used in today’s hybrids. They’re just too bulky. Lithium is a possibility though it’s still kind of marginal in automotive applications, but I tend to believe that air cathode batteries, most likely rechargeable air lithium batteries are the best bet. These have energy densities approaching fuel cells and some types are already in commercial use. Combine these with the most advanced type of ICE such as a two stroke compression ignition design and you’re probably looking at over 100 miles per gallon. In fact one company, AFS Trinity, a flywheel manufacturer, claims that they can eventually build a passenger vehicle capable of 200 plus miles per gallon. At that point both global warming and fossil fuel depletion look a lot less urgent.

Most of the work the auto manufacturers have already done on fuel cell vehicles is directly applicable to such a design. They’re generally farming out the fuel stack engineering to specialists and concentrating on power plant management systems and electric motors, both of which are needed in an optimized plug-in hybrid. When they need to migrate to such advanced hybrids they’ll have most of the basic research out of the way. The irony is that most auto makers publicly state that hybrids are a bridge technology to fuel cell vehicles. It’s more likely the other way around.

So why bother publicizing fuel cells at all? Because it’s a way of postponing action. Insist that fuel cells are the only way to go and then add that you’re facing at least a decade of research before going to market. And hope that the public will be patient.

Plug in hybrids of reasonable effectiveness could probably be developed in three to five years because most of the technology is near to where it needs to be. With fuel cells all bets are off. No one knows how long it might take to make them commercial, and no one knows if they can be successful at all.

So why are the auto makers playing a waiting game with fuel cells and failing to move on plug-in hybrids? Simple economics. Developing a new engine production facility costs in excess of one billion dollars, not counting the design work on the new engine itself. Opting for a plug-in hybrid involves a commitment that is probably on the order of not one but several billion dollars after all the changeover costs have been factored in. And the possibility exists that the fuel cell research costs can be recouped in other areas than automobile manufacturing. Many auto manufacturers work in aerospace and military contracting where fuel cells are already present in niche applications. What might not work in an automobile could be eminently salable somewhere else.

Auto manufacturers are not nearly ready to make a commitment to plug-in hybrids and for a good reason. A plug-in hybrid of really advanced design would be quite expensive to build today, and even with rising gasoline prices, might not represent a very good value for the customer unless the vehicle were held for many years. Let’s say the vehicle carried a price premium of $12,000 which might indeed be the case. Twelve thousand dollars can buy a lot of $3 per gallon gasoline—4,000 gallons to be exact. How far can you go on 4,000 gallons? If you only get 20 miles to the gallon, you can go 80,000 miles which for most of us is several years of driving. Right now the gas guzzler probably makes more sense even with elevated fuel prices.

At some point the cost of gasoline, diesel, or mixtures of the latter with biofuel, synfuel, or alcohol will rise to the point where plug-in hybrids become compelling, but it won’t be right away. Lower grade fossil fuel resources such as tar sand, oil shale, and methane hydrates will come on line within ten years and arrest the ascent of fuel prices for a time. My guess is that plug-in hybrids might not appear in any numbers for another dozen years or more.

So how does hydrogen fit in? In a plug-in hybrid, a hydrogen ICE begins to make some sense because you’re using so little fuel in the first place. The storage problems that plague cars using nothing but hydrogen for energy storage become much less significant.

Does that mean a plug-in hybrid hydrogen ICE design represents the future? Maybe, but only if governments begin to mandate greenhouse gas emissions standards that even fossil fuel or biofuel plug-in hybrids can’t meet. Will that happen? Maybe in Europe, but probably not in India and China and probably not in the U.S. My belief is that enough hydrocarbon fuel can be produced from various sources—coal, conventional petroleum, biological materials, methane hydrates, and recycled petrochemicals—that hydrogen won’t be all that cost competitive for the rest of the century unless some really cheap form of electrical generation emerges. Some people think that’s fusion and maybe it is, but fusion reactors are currently infeasible and even if they’re perfected they’ll cost a mint if they’re anything like the current experimental designs.

At any rate, the auto makers know that they may not be able to continue with business as usual for the next hundred years or even the next thirty years, and that they need to have some options in place. The problem is that they may not be even considering the right options at this point.

One has to entertain the possibility that the transportation systems of the late twenty-first century may be fundamentally different from those of today. Transportation ninety years ago bore little in common with what we have today. Cars were rare outside the U.S., air travel was almost nonexistent and what little existed was mostly lighter than air; ships and trains accounted for most mechanized transportation around the world. And in American cities electric street cars were the principal mode of transport. Is it safe to assume that in what will probably be an era of equally rapid technological change, familiar modes of transport will remain unaltered except for the fuel?

What really radical changes might occur in this century? One distinct possibility is that current fossil fuel energy problems won’t be adequately addressed, and that severe and protracted economic crises will ensue accompanied by ruinously expensive transportation fuel prices. Obviously if that worst case scenario occurs, there won’t be as many miles traveled by airplanes and automobiles. Another possibility, a happier one to be sure, is that personal rapid transit systems will appear, not some revamp of today’s wretched light rail systems, but individual vehicles traveling on overhead rails that can be summoned in seconds and programmed to take the individual traveler anywhere within a metropolitan area at speeds exceeding 100mph. Such systems have already been designed, and somebody will build one somewhere within fifteen years. If it succeeds it could obsolesce automobiles more quickly than you could possibly imagine. How about evacuated tube MagLev? Such systems were envisioned forty years ago and there are serious efforts underway to develop them in China. In such a system magnetically propelled cars ride on frictionless bearings in tubes maintained at a mild vacuum. With no air resistance, the cars can travel at speeds of thousands of miles per hour with vastly better energy efficiency than supersonic aircraft and no noise. There is no question that such systems could be built with existing technology—in fact, they’re far more feasible than fuel cells today. Will they happen? God knows. The race is not always to the swift.

Still another possibility is the appearance of low cost, partially automated personal aircraft capable of near vertical takeoff. Prototypes of such aircraft have been designed and NASA has a serious program for sponsoring their development. Such vehicles would constitute a truly disruptive technology, far more than fuel cell powered cars, and yet the technology for realizing them is much closer to realization.

The current personal transformation system based upon automobiles is absolutely pervasive, constraining and conditioning where we live and work, how we interface with friends and associates, how we learn, how we spend our leisure, and how we worship. Because automotive transportation in its present form so powerfully shapes our life, it is highly resistant to change. Eliminating it or even modifying substantially is almost like pulling the bloodstream out of a man and expecting him to keep on functioning. Think of the Comanche of Oklahoma whose whole material and cultural existence was predicated upon equestrian nomadism? What happened when they were defeated, dismounted, and confined to reservations? The culture was shattered, the people broken. And yet if history teaches us anything it is that overwhelming changes can occur no matter how tightly knit is any given material civilization.

THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY

2005-10-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

A HYDROGEN ECONOMY BASED ENTIRELY ON RENEWABLES
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

I am currently involved in preparing a market study on hydrogen—one which focuses primarily on present industrial uses rather than anticipated uses in fuel cell powered cars or fuel cell based distributed electrical generation. There is, however, a segment devoted to energy, and, in preparing that segment, I have been compelled to come to grips with the vision of a hydrogen economy based entirely upon renewable energy and to arrive at some estimate of its feasibility.

Remarkably, no one seems to have performed any detailed analysis in this area. Legions of Greens assume that such a transition is not only a foregone conclusion but that no obstacles stand in the way of its accomplishment other than the greed of large corporations with a stake in the existing energy regime.

But are these assumptions in fact true?

Perhaps the best means of arriving at an answer is to examine the renewable options and to determine what renewable energy resources could be effectively exploited on such a scale as to supplant the current fossil fuel regime.

Renewable energy sources include wind; solar energy; hydroelectric power; ocean power, which in some sense is a subcategory of hydroelectric; geothermal; and biomass. Of this group only wind appears highly promising for truly large scale energy generation in the United States. Solar energy is fine for providing off-grid electrical power to residences and small businesses but is currently far too expensive for utility scale electrical generation, though that may change in the future. The others are either dark horses or not in the running at all. Hydroelectric is limited to certain favorable locales as is geothermal. Ocean power, whether we’re discussing wave or tidal generators or those based on temperature differentials, is largely unproven, while biomass requires such large amounts of land that is unlikely ever to serve as anything more than a supplementary energy source.

So let’s examine wind in further detail while putting the others aside for the moment.

Hydrogen economy prophets like to cite Department of Energy statistics on total wind resources for the U.S. continental land mass, resources that are so plentiful that but a tiny fraction of them would meet our energy needs in full now and for the foreseeable future. They also like to cite various studies that indicate that wind power is now fully cost competitive with fossil fuel generated electricity. Both assertions are essentially true, but they must be considered in the light of certain evidence, that while not directly contradictory, yet calls the case for a easy renewable transition into question.

First the matter of the size and scope of the wind resources.

Wind resources are huge, no doubt about it. Unfortunately they not necessarily easily exploited. Most utility scale turbines require at least an 8 knot breeze in order to operate and thus are limited to areas with strong prevailing winds such as mountain passes, coastal areas or the Great Plains. Lower speed designs exist but they generally trade off efficiency and cost effectiveness. And because the most favorable wind resources are most commonly found in remote areas, expanding the scope of wind generation generally requires a lot of new transmission capacity which is expensive to build and will consequently tend to make wind power uncompetitive with fossil fuel plants. Moreover, wind power, if implemented on a grand scale, would require a fundamentally different kind of electrical grid than we have today.

The key problem here is delivering a steady 110 or 220 volts to residences and businesses with a wildly fluctuating power source. When wind is merely a supplementary source, as it is everywhere today, then the fossil fuel core electrical generation system can provide the steady base line power. But if that’s not the case, then we have a problem.

The solution would be to build significant overcapacity in the wind generation facilities and utilize that overcapacity to create a reserve of stored energy. Most hydrogen advocates see hydrogen functioning as an energy carrier and the hydrogen itself being generated by electrolysis.

The question is how much overcapacity would be required, and that in turn raises the questions of how the hydrogen will be utilized in generating baseline power and how big will the base line generation plant have to be in relation to the renewable plant?

I haven’t been able to arrive at any firm answers to either question as yet, but here are some thoughts. Most renewable advocates favor hydrogen fuel cells for providing base line power. Fuel cells have poor load following characteristics, are extremely expensive, and require DC to AC converters. The last introduce a whole host of problems, and probably the best course would be to use the DC output of the fuel cell to run a large DC motor which would turn an AC generator that would produce pure sine wave AC power. But a better solution would probably be to use hydrogen burning turbines which would emulate the characteristics of the current natural gas generators that produce a large fraction of the electrical power in the U.S. today.

The turbines would have to have a load following capability that would compensate for the fluctuations in output of the wind farms, so one would need data to determine that. An alternative might be to redesign the transmission grid entirely to deliver DC. High voltage DC transmission is already widely used in Russia and would be facilitated by the use of superconducting power cables which are available today, albeit at high price. If power transmission were DC, and AC were only produced locally, the problem of voltage fluctuation would only be visible at the inverter which could be designed to accommodate such fluctuations. In a pure AC system with no conversions voltage fluctuations are propagated through the entire grid as we have seen in regional power outages.

In any event, the cost of wind turbines alone for replacing fossil fuel powered turbines would be in the trillions. In think at least two million turbines would be needed and maybe more. One megawatt turbines go for over a million dollars a piece, and to replace the current 1000 gigawatt output of the existing fossil fuel and nuclear system would appear to cost about 1.6 trillion dollars. But turbines are generally rated at peak power output, not typical power output because that varies with wind speed. Normally, however, average power output is far below peak power, and so large, one megawatt, utility grade wind turbines need to be derated. And then there’s the matter of reserve capacity we talked about. First we’d have to determine just what percentage of total power reserve power should equal and then compute the reserve power requirement, taking into account the fact that we’d only be getting back about a quarter of the energy used in creating the reserve power due to losses in the electrolysis process and the subsequent use of hydrogen to generate electrical power.

If the grid is used to create hydrogen to run the transportation system, then the situation looks much worse. Transportation accounts for almost half the energy usage in the U.S. today, and the well to wheel efficiency of fuel cell powered vehicles is less than 20%. So what are we talking about, more than doubling the total renewable requirement after already increasing it by some multiple to provide reserve capacity?

And that’s leaving aside the cost of creating a new grid.

I believe that building a renewable based hydrogen economy might carry a price tag of over 20 trillion dollars for the United States alone. Such an undertaking would involve a commitment of a major portion of this nation’s total industrial capacity and investment capital. It’s just staggering.

In a purely technical sense it’s probably feasible, but in economic and political terms I just don’t see it happening. I think the U.S. is facing a very dicey energy situation in the first half of this century, a situation for which there are no obvious solutions. I don’t necessarily accept the Doomsday scenarios some have painted, other societies have adapted to shortages in the past, but dependence of the U.S. industrial economy on every increasing supplies of ever less expensive energy is troubling.

ENGINES --A PRIMER

2005-09-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

UNCONVENTIONAL CONVENTIONAL INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES
BY Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

It’s been awhile since the last posting, but then events have overtaken all of us, haven’t they? The City of New Orleans, the font of so much that is admirable in American artistic culture, has been devastated, and much of its priceless architectural heritage has been destroyed, not to mention the decimation of its populace. One wonders if the money for a complete restoration—ah, that’s the wrong word, it can never be complete—no, an extensive restoration, will be forthcoming from a government seemingly bent on new Middle Eastern adventures.

Before I conclude my discussion of innovative heat engines, which began several posts back, might I make a modest proposal for the mitigation of another problem afflicting our nation, this one having very much to do with internal combustion engines? I refer, of course, to the high and rising cost of gasoline. I propose that our President, who has already displayed such exemplary leadership through the course of trying week, show further leadership in the following manner. He should immediately and forthwith launch another one of his tax cutting initiatives. This time he should craft legislation for a floating tax cut where the rate of tax reduction would bear a direct relationship with the increase in the price of crude oil over the course of the calendar year. I am not suggesting a flat rate tax reduction or a rebate—of course the very wealthy should receiver greater reductions than the middle class as they are more deserving—but everyone should get something. This would allow our President to fend off the growing criticism that he is inattentive to the problem and of course would be in complete harmony with his political platform. Paying for gasoline by increasing the National Debt strikes me as a thoroughly commendable public policy and one that we could all embrace wholeheartedly.

Defining Conventional

A conventional internal combustion engine by our definition would be a reciprocating engine—that is, it would employ pistons. Rotary types, as we have seen, are not well established in any market other than power generation, and we see little likelihood of their supplanting reciprocating types in other applications.

Use of pistons still leaves the designer with considerable scope for innovation. He can utilize unusual mechanical linkages for converting the linear motion of the piston to rotary motion. He can utilize exotic materials. He can design the injectors in such a manner that the fluid dynamics of combustion are made more conducive to efficiency. He can design the engine around the use of unconventional fuels. And he can alter the method of ignition. Some designs, as we shall see, employ several such strategies.

The Surprising Return of the Two Stroke

The two stroke internal combustion engine was invented in the eighteen eighties by an English mechanical engineer named Dougald Clerk. Clerk’s original design was somewhat akin to what today is known as the stepped piston two stroke, but he felt that this first iteration, which utilized a displacer piston somewhat in the manner of the Stirling engine, was inelegant and overly complex, and in the following decade he developed the basic design that is still used today in the majority of two stroke production engines.

Clerk’s engine, and most of the two stroke designs that followed, hewed to a simple basic plan. The intake stroke and the exhaust stroke of four cycle engines are eliminated as were intake and exhaust valves in the cylinder head. Instead the cylinder is provided with ports which are uncovered when the piston reaches the top of the cylinder. The cavity within the cylinder presents a partial vacuum in relationship to the crankcase, and a fuel-air mixture rushes in from the crankcase to fill the vacuum after the fumes of combustion have issued out of the exhaust port. Then the fuel air mixture is compressed on the downstroke, ignited—in most cases, by a conventional spark plug—and the piston is driven upward to produce mechanical energy.

Two stroke engines of the usual design have two singular virtues: mechanical simplicity and high power density. The first is obvious, and the second arises from the fact that they produce one power stroke per each revolution rather than one for every two revolutions as is the case with four stroke designs. Thus for a given horsepower rating, a two stroke engine is apt to be approximately half as massive as its four stroke counterpart. For this reason two strokes have long been favored in power tools, lawn motors, small outboard engines for boats, snowmobiles, experimental aircraft—any application where weight is a crucial issue.

In automobiles and in larger stationary generators two strokes have not been favored, however, and today traditional designs are in increasing disfavor within most of their traditional markets. And the reason for that has to do with the inherent limitations of the standard design.

The biggest failure of the traditional two strokes is their inability to burn fuel cleanly and completely. Because the exhaust fumes are not pushed out of the cylinder as is the case with four strokes, a good deal of exhaust gas remains and mingles with the incoming fuel air mixture. Worse yet, the fuel has to be mixed with lubricants because the air filled crankcase cannot be provided with a sump of motor oil, and thus the engine must depend upon the oil and gas mixture for lubrication. The presence of such lubricants in the gasoline along with the exhaust fumes lingering in the cylinder makes for very incomplete combustion, resulting in poor efficiency and copious emissions. Moreover, most two stroke engines release a lot of uncombusted oil into the environment.

Lubrication is much less effective in two strokes than in four strokes, and thus they tend to run hot and are prone to failure if operated at peak power for any length of time. They are also difficult to muffle because the exhaust system demands a free flow of gases. For the same reason, turbo-charging is difficult to implement. Operators of jet skis and motocross motorcycles were willing to tolerate the limitations of two strokes because they put out so much power per unit of mass, but governmental agencies in charge of air and water quality have moved to limit or eliminate the use of two strokes in many areas of the world. The Republic of Singapore, for instance, has completely outlawed conventional two stroke engines within its jurisdiction.

Manufactures of two stroke engine, facing the attrition of their core markets, began to get innovative. Most began to license one of two direct injection technologies that promised to ameliorate the incomplete combustion problem.

The remedies in common use today are the Orbital Engines and Ficht direct injection. Both retain the usual air intake method but inject fuel separately and in such a manner that the air fuel mixture is stratified and occupies only one portion of the cylinder cavity and does not mix with the exhaust fumes. This results in a much more complete combustion and sharply reduced emissions.

Other innovations have involved providing the exhaust system with an air pump to assist in clearing the cylinders and what is known as active radical combustion, a type of compression ignition resulting in a cleaner burn and eliminating the need for spark plugs. Honda has actually manufactured combustion two strokes that exhibit active radical combustion.

The use of supercharging or turbo-charging can also considerably improve efficiency and reduce emission, largely by forcing exhausts gases out of the cylinder at the top of the power stroke.

Yet another interesting innovation is the stepped piston two stroke which utilizes a displacer piston which also serves to improve the breathing of the engine. The idea goes back to the eighteen eighties and has recently been revived by an English manufacturer named Bernard Hooper Engineering.

Advances in metallurgy have also led to improvements in two stroke performance and reliability. Hirth in Germany has succeeded in manufacturing highly reliable two stroke aircraft engines using exotic aluminum alloys that hold up under very high temperatures.

We have already mentioned two stroke diesels in a previous post. Huge examples of the latter known for some reason as “cathedral engines” have long been used in merchant ships, and recently a number of companies including Wilksch and Aero-Diesel in Germany and DeltaHawk in the U.S have developed smaller engines, most aimed at the general aviation market. The Aero-Diesel units are remarkable in achieving outputs in excess of one horsepower per pound, an impressive and unprecedented achievement in a compression ignition engine.

Finally, mention should be made of the Pivotal Engineering two stroke, a design from New Zealand originally developed for motorcycle racing. The Pivotal engine uses a most unusual piston which reciprocates on a pivot within a combustion chamber with curved walls, making the engine a sort of semi-rotary. The pivoting piston is hollow and provides for internal water cooling, addressing the heating problem that has plagued all two stroke designs. And because the motion of the piston is rotary, the mechanical linkages are considerably simpler than is the case for conventional piston engines. An Orbital Engine direct ignition system is utilized as well. Interestingly, this engine has been designed from the onset to run on hydrogen as well as gasoline.

Pivotal Engineering is relatively well financed compared to most startups in the ICE business, but like all others faces an uphill struggle to penetrate major markets. Like most other startups they are aiming at the stationary generation market.

The Four Stroke Sector

Four stroke piston engines represent very mature technology and of course also represent the incumbent technology in most markets. Space does not permit a discussion of every recent innovation in this area, but we can identify the most significant.

The most important development we see is the high pressure common rail injection system for compression ignition engines which is utilized in most automotive diesels manufactured in Europe today. High pressure common rail substitutes a single injection system for multiple injectors and results in higher power output and improved efficiency. Engines so equipped exhibit none of the typical sluggishness long associated with diesels.

Direct injection in spark ignition engines we have discussed previously. It permits double digit increases in fuel efficiency in spark ignition entgines at no sacrifice of power. Currently direct injection is offered in one six cylinder engine designed by Mazda but we expect it to become commonplace in the mid term.

Plasma ignition is an interesting and promising innovation that is said to result in improved efficiency in gasoline engines. Currently plasma ignition is confined to the aftermarket. SmartPlugs of Utah is the principal manufacturer.

Another invention that holds promise is the Dolphin ACI pulse jet supercharging system. This invention, which has performed well in independent tests, is a form of supercharging where the energy of the exhaust is utilized, as in a turbo-charger, but where a gating system provides the engine with successive pulses of pressurized air rather than continuous pressure. The system borrows the principal of operation used in the old German V1 pulse jet “buzz bomb”, and is claimed to provide greatly increased power and efficiency over turbo-charging along with reduced emissions.

The most interesting development we have seen in the four stroke realm is the Axial Vector engine, a thoroughly innovative product based on an old design known as the Scotch yoke engine. A Scotch yoke is a mechanical device invented by Leonardo Da Vinci that directly translates linear motion into rotary motion without a conventional crankshaft. Scotch yoke engines are typically lighter, smaller, simpler, and more efficient than their conventional counterparts, but have suffered from limited operating lives due to stress induced failure of the Scotch yoke itself. Axial Vector claims to have solved those problems.

The Axial Vector design uses twelve cylinders and six double acting pistons, each of which communicates with two cylinders. The cylinders are disposed in two tubular arrangements and fire in sequence while driving a sinusoidal cam. The company claims that an engine weighing about sixty pounds is capable of outputting some five hundred horsepower without supercharging.

The engine utilizes plasma ignition, ceramic cylinders and cylinder sleeves, and a proprietary injection system with piezoelectric actuators and sensors for controlling droplet size. The system is computer controlled. The Axial Vector is said to be capable of running on any fuel without modification and of achieving 45% efficiency. Oil rather than water cooling is employed, contributing to a substantial weight savings. Tektronix is an investor.

The Axial Vector engine is based in part on a much older design known as the DynaCam which was developed for use in small aircraft in 1957 and has also been used in naval torpedoes. DynaCam, the company, sold intellectual property to Axial Vector and is now embroiled in a dispute with the latter while attempting to market the older design in the general aviation market.

The Axial Vector engine, at least on paper, is the most impressive new design I have seen, and the firm itself is well endowed with financial resources, a must in the business of new engine development where prototyping generally requires tens of millions of dollars minimally. The company is targeting military transportation markets initially, a high risk strategy with high potential payoffs.

In Summation

Thus concludes our survey of innovation within the vast discipline of heat engine design. My point is simple. Exclusive concentration on fuel cells as a solution to energy problems seems to me unwarranted in view of continued advances in heat engine designs and the extreme difficulties in developing cost effective, long lasting fuel cells.

Next post deals with the economics of the hydrogen economy. This will be an eye opener.

CARTER'S SWEATER

2005-08-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

JIMMY CARTER’S SWEATER
BY Daniel Sweeney

I had intended to conclude my series on innovative heat engine in this posting, but that can wait. Instead I would like to make one of my rare forays into the realm of public policy.

The chickens, it appears may finally be coming home to roost. The American public and indeed the rest of the world are facing the very real prospect of permanent high petroleum prices. It is possible that a significant price decline could occur in the future, but all indications are that such a decline would be only temporary. Demand will simply outstrip production, if not in the midterm surely in the long term. We happen to believe that stepped up exploitation of heavy oils and oil shales as well as massive production of synfuel from coal will do something to alleviate the decline in conventional petroleum production, but since none of these substitutes can be produced inexpensively, the high prices are probably here to stay.

Such production of unconventional oil will of course do nothing to alleviate the concentration of carbon dioxide and particulate emissions in the atmosphere, but that’s a separate problem, one of less moment to inhabitants of the developed world than are the elevated operating costs in respect to their automobiles.

Mainstream newspapers have at last begun to discuss peak oil in their editorial pages, something I thought I wouldn’t see for at least another decade. I recall enduring considerable derision when bringing up the topic five years ago, but I must confess I derive little comfort from being vindicated.

Interestingly, politicians, with very rare exceptions, never ever broach the topic. And of course the recent energy bill makes no acknowledgement of the problem. In the minds of politicians across the political spectrum—that is, extending from right center to far right because the left in America has atrophied to nonexistence—oil shortages appear to represent a problem that will be effectively sorted out by the market, and thus should be exempted from all political discussion.

The whole issue of plotting a new energy regime is off the table, being of infinitely less moment than the teaching of “intelligent design” in our schools or regulating the cloning of Afghan hounds, the political issues du jour.

Is it because our political leaders are indeed the ignorant sluts we’ve often suspected them to be in our more paranoid moments? No, I believe that for the most part they’re more motivated by fear than greed, and the fear, unfortunately, is justifiable.

To understand the genesis of that fear, let us board our light rail time machine which will take us back no further than the disco age presided over by the very antithesis of boogie, the honorable James Earl. “Jimmy” Carter, the thirty-ninth President of the United States and one of the unhappiest.

Now Jimmy Carter was and is a genuinely bright individual, and was and is singularly knowledgeable on the subject of energy. He knew of a certainty that protracted energy problems were looming ahead, and he took the largely politically induced price spikes of his own era as something of a wake up call. And he communicated his unease to the public by addressing the nation on television wearing a cardigan sweater and indicating that we should all turn our thermostats down to avoid burning any more fossil fuel than we had to. Carter also spoke of a “malaise” that was supposedly afflicting the nation—was he alluding to disco, one wonders—and he generally affected a glum, censorious persona that was painfully at odds with all those platform shoes and silver coke spoons and heady good times on the dance floor that so many of us were experiencing at the time. One was inclined, I must say, to turn up the music, clasp one’s dancing partner close, and generate one’s own energy borne of the persistent high hopes that almost never desert the young. I myself was young then and shameless frequented discoteques, and though I voted for Carter, I secretly sympathized with the angry buck rabbit that attacked the President in his canoe. “Shut up, already,” the irate lagomorph is said to have have shouted as it bit off a piece of the President’s paddle. “Enough with the small is beautiful crap.”

Apparently enough of us rabbits were mesmerized by the disco mirror balls and annoyed by the President’s jeremiads that things began to look very bad for Jungle Jimmy in the polls. Indeed, he lost by a landslide to Ronald “Morning in America” Reagan, and political America drew a lesson from that. Don’t say nothin’ about conservation or shortages lest you draw an early retirement from the government and get waylaid by some buck rabbit with a hard on. People want to splurge not conserve. As they say in New Orleans, laissez les bons temps rouler.

So here we are, four years into the new millennium and our political leadership—is that the right word—are absolutely mute on the subject of gasoline beyond assuring us that the Alaska Wildlife Preserve is endowed with inexhaustible supplies of light crude if we’d just be patient.

One wonders why the current administration simply doesn’t resort to the obvious expedient, expel the local population from the vicinity of Iraq’s southern oil fields, establish a cordon sanitaire around the latter complete with electric fences and huge swathes of land mined fields to keep out insurgents, and simply take over the operation and get the fields up to full capacity. Obviously any pretense of spreading democracy would have to be abandoned, but that never stopped the colonial powers of old. I am predicting in fact that such a course of action will eventually be undertaken with what long term consequences I can’t even begin to imagine.

The larger question is are longer term energy problems amenable to pure market solutions? Previous energy revolutions were mostly market driven and privately financed. The exception is the massive use of innovative windmills in seventeenth century Holland where public funding figured in a big way. Of course one could also include Stalin’s electrification projects of the early twentieth century but one hesitates to cite that model. Let us fervently hope that the market alone can somehow save us because it doesn’t look like any political efforts will be made.

I had hoped by this time in my life to be generating own hydrogen and tooling around in a BMW seven liter flexible fuel vehicle, oblivious to the chaotic market for dinosaur juice. Evidently, it wasn’t to be.

(feel free to comment)
Send emails to: Ivonerose@aol.com
Or Dswee34359@aol.com

ENGINE OF INNOVATION

2005-08-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

INNOVATIVE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES
by Daniel Sweeney

Much more research and development has gone on in the field of internal combustion heat engines than the external combustion variety, and we believe that it is here that momentous changes are most likely to occur in the future. Quite a considerable number of startup companies are active in this space, and their activities are arguably at least as significant for the future of energy in transportation and small scale stationary energy transportation as are the endeavors of the fuel cell industry.

Before we explore the nature of some of the more interesting innovations a word regarding the competitive position of next generation internal combustion and hybrid electric systems vis a vis fuel cells.

Hydrogen based fuel cells constitute an intriguing technology that may yet play role in the energy revolution we’re going to have to undergo. But the nature of their backers should give one pause.

David Morris, head of the Institute for Self Reliance which is trade organization for ethanol producers, told us in an interview that almost everybody had lined up behind the hydrogen economy—the auto manufacturers, the oil companies, even the nuclear industry. Hmmm…. These are the guys that have been fighting like the devil for a green future all along, right?

If we ignore nuclear for a moment, an industry struggling for its very survival in the U.S., and instead we concentrate on the auto makers and the oil companies, we find it rather remarkable that either would embrace a successor technology at this point, particularly when there is a sufficient supply of heavy oil and oil shale to carry the transportation sector for many more decades. And we are not alone in our suspicions.

We believe, based on background interviews with both oil industry and auto industry insiders, that a number of factors are at work here.

In respect to the oil industry, hydrogen distribution could be made to fit within the same model used to distribute petroleum products today. That might not necessarily be the best model to pursue from an economic standpoint, but the oil companies are eager to promote it for obvious reasons. We are, however, extremely doubtful that the model will prove economically viable on any long term basis regardless of the wishes of the oil industry, a topic we will pursue in future posts.

Auto manufacturers are in a somewhat different position. From our perspective hydrogen fuel cells are a very long shot for a practical propulsion system because of numerous unsolved technical problems and because of the dubious economics of generating hydrogen from renewables. Their success would also require the auto manufacturers to phase out current tooling, some of which has been in place for decades. Particularly in America, archaic engine designs utilizing pushrods and other anachronisms continue to be manufactured today, and compared to European and Japanese manufacturers, Ford and GM have been very slow to innovate. For this reason some of our informants have suggested that the American auto makers actually have a very weak commitment to fuel cells and view the development projects as good public relations ploys that exempt them from improving either the fuel efficiency or emissions performance of ICEs (internal combustion engines).

We happen to believe that absent unexpected breakthroughs in fuel cells and a major re-orientation of the fuel cell industry in a number of areas, fuel cells are likely to lose out to plug-in hybrids using new ultra-high density battery technologies and vastly improved ICEs. This will not happen quickly, however, because of the innate conservatism of any manufacturer owning vast, fully amortized production facilities and eager to placate stock holders with consistent short term profits rather than heavy investment for the future.

That said, let’s look at what’s new and significant in ICE design.

ICE, ICE

ICEs form an enormously diverse body of design approaches, and in coming to grips with that diversity it helps to throw everything into two big files—the truly radical machines and the variations on familiar approaches. The radical mechanisms represent a more or less complete rethinking of engine design while the second grouping consists of significant improvements on the existing art.

As a working taxonomy this two pile ploy is somewhat inexact because sometimes the improvements in old designs are themselves pretty radical while much of what appears to be truly radical total design concepts represents ideas that were conceived long ago and for one reason or another couldn’t be made to work at the time. In other words, some things could go in either pile. That said, I’ll start to build the piles.

Most of the really radical approaches attempt to substitute rotary elements for pistons. These can be turbine blades, rotating vanes moving within a loop, or rotors describing eccentric motions that create variable volume cavities within an elliptical chamber. Also pretty radical are double ended pistons moving within a pair of opposing pistons, a concept that has actually shown up in a couple of commercial designs.

The variations on a theme innovations include the Miller cycle, direct injection, pulse detonation—mostly inventions impacting on the combustion process within engines of more or less conventional mechanical design.

There are also designs that simply defy categorization such as the OX2 which is an attempt to revive the old rotating crankcase engines used on some early aircraft.

Whether the design is radically new or simply a variation on a theme, the designer generally confronts one highly intractable conundrum, one that has worked strongly against innovation in this field, and that is the fact that one nearly always faces a tradeoff between fuel efficiency and power density. Engines that crank out a lot of horsepower per pound such as Wankels, gas turbines, and two stroke gasoline reciprocating engines, generally have very poor efficiency, while highly efficient engines such as Miller cycle gasoline engines and four stroke diesels usually have low power outputs per unit of mass.

High energy density is generally a function of relative simplicity of design and fewer moving parts. This is certainly true of Wankels, turbines, and two strokes. Higher efficiency, on the other hand, is generally a result of optimizing thermodynamics rather than mechanical systems though certainly frictional losses ought to be minimized. Achieving relatively complete combustion, minimizing thermal losses, and harnessing the expansive powers of the gases of combustion to the greatest extent all play a role in maximizing efficiency. For a number of reasons which we’ll explore in due course, high efficiency designs tend to relatively large and heavy.

Lots of inventors claim to have achieved low power density combined with high efficiency but few have been able to back up such claims in the field.

The Really Radical Pile or Mostly Rotaries

All of the basic variants of rotary engines were developed in the nineteenth century and mostly applied to the steam engine. Except for the Parsons steam turbine, which became the basis for practically all modern coal and nuclear power plants, none of the other steam rotaries achieved even a foothold in the market.

Regarding the internal combustion rotaries there are two that might be deemed to be established in the market, the Brayton gas turbine and the Wankel.

The Brayton is well nigh ubiquitous today, forming as it does the basis of the turbojet and fanjet engines used in commercial and military aircraft. Braytons are also very extensively used in natural gas fired electric generator plants and to a limited extent in fast patrol boats and in a few yachts. They have seen very limited use in general aviation in turboprops.

Braytons at their simplest consist of two sections, a compressor and an expander, both of which make use of the aerodynamic lift created by a series of airfoils. In the compressor section the airfoils serve to draw in and compress the combustible fluid and air while in the expander the forces of combustion act on the airfoils.

Braytons are mechanically very simple but have traditionally been expensive to manufacture, the dozens airfoils each requiring precise machining and fitting as well as the ability to resist extreme thermal and mechanical stresses. To cite an example, within the general aviation market, a new Lycoming 200 horsepower certified reciprocating engine will run a little over thirty grand while a turbine of equivalent horsepower will cost about $200,000. An American manufacture named Innodyn is aiming to achieve radical price reductions with an innovative turbine of their own design, but at this point the design is unproven in the marketplace. Innnodyn also claims to have successfully addressed another deficiency of the Brayton turbine, namely its poor fuel efficiency. The company claims to have achieved efficiency on a par with a spark ignition piston engine, which in truth is only fair and not good.

Other innovators, such as StarRotor, Kirnov vortex turbines, and TurbX claim much more substantial performance improvements and cost reductions based on far more radical designs, but unlike Innodyn, none of these companies is closed to having a production engine. The manufacturing of engines is a very expensive business to enter and to date only one radical design has ever achieved even limited success, namely the Wankel.

Wankel, the product of a self educated German mechanic named Felix Wankel, was invented in 1926, but Wankel, who was without means and was imprisoned for making anti-Nazis statements, was unable to bring his invention to market. Only in the nineteen fifties when he managed to interest NSU in the design did the necessary funding to productize the design become available.

The Wankel, which is in strictest terms of rotary piston rather than a true rotary engine, is simple and compact and offers extraordinary energy density. Mazda has developed a racing version of their 13B design that puts out 900 horsepower at a weight of slightly over 200lbs, surely a record.

Fuel economy is the Wankel’s Achilles heel and traditionally it has not been much better than that of a simple Brayton turbine. The problem is inherent in the design. In a Wankel the rotating piston traverses the entire inner wall of the combustion chamber which constitutes a huge radiating surface. Thus heat of combustion is efficiently transferred to the block which in turn reduces the pressure of the burning gas and thus the amount of mechanical work it can perform. Also, partially combusted gases are pushed out of the engine during normal operation due to very high engine speeds required to achieve maximum power, a liability which also contributes to high emissions.

One solution that has been proposed is to manufacture the block out of low thermal conductivity ceramics rather than metal. Ultrahard Materials of Great Britain has done some prototyping in this area but has not secured the funding to proceed with the project. Freedom Motors of Davis, California has taken the halfway approach of coating the combustion chamber with a fine ceramic while retaining structural aluminum for the rest.

Freedom Motors claims substantially better fuel economy than ordinary spark ignition reciprocating engines of equivalent horsepower and vastly lower emissions than other Wankels. Freedom Motors has produced many prototypes but is not in the production business and is seeking to license the design. Many companies are currently evaluating the design but thus far no independent confirmations of the claims have been published.

Various other Wankel designers are active around the world, most in the area of general aviation where the high power density of the engines is highly advantageous. Wankel Gmbh of Germany and Mid West Motors of Great Britain both make innovative Wankels but neither has achieved great success in the market nor has either managed to achieve any real efficiency breakthrough.

We believe that Wankels will continue to fascinate mechanical engineers and that new versions will continue to be developed, but we believe that the inherent limitations of the design will probably prevent any significant market penetration.

Notwithstanding the Wankel’s indifferent success in the market, numbers of innovators have attempted to promote other rotary designs. Two of the most interesting are the Quasiturbine and Phoenix Navigation Tesla Turbine.

The Quasiturbine is the brain child of an exnuclear physicist named Giles St. Hilaire who resides in Quebec. The design has received a great of attention from the automotive press and has excited considerable controversy.

Utilizing an ellipsoidal housing reminiscent of the Wankel, the Quasiturbine substitutes a deformable four faced rotor for the Wankel’s eccentrically rotating triangular piston. The four faces of the Quasiturbine rotor provide more power strokes per revolution than is the case with the Wankel’s, and the flexible structure of the rotor appears to ameliorate the sealing problems associated with Wankels. The rotor also works in a purely rotational fashion unlike that of the Wankel which reciprocates as it turns, and thus vibration levels of the Quasiturbine should be very low, comparable to those of a Brayton turbine. St. Hilaire claims very high efficiency for the design and that claim rests upon a further claim that seems of the face of it rather incredible. The further claim is that the Quasiturbine operates successfully in the pulse detonation mode.

In the normal course of things, one would expect the Quasiturbine to exhibit the same thermodynamic deficiencies as the Wankel namely severe loss of thermal energy through the engine walls and incomplete fuel combustion. Nevetheless, if St. Hilaire’s claims are really true, the increment in overall efficiency brought about by pulse detonation should more than make up for any thermal losses and would result in complete combustion as well.

To date those claims have not been independently verified. St. Hilaire in his technical literature indicates that pulse detonation once achieved continues indefinitely as fuel is added to the engine, but since pulse detonation is supersonic, that would appear to require a very high engine speed if it in fact were true. The other problem is initiating pulse detonation. Most attempt to do so have involved supplementary combustion chambers and complex arrangements of internal baffles which are possible in a turbine with a combustion chamber of fixed dimensions but not in a Quasiturbine where the dimensions of the chamber are constantly changing.

Also claiming success in achieving pulse detonation in a rotary ICE is Ken Rieli, president of Phoenix Navigation. Rieli’s innovations is based on the famous Tesla or boundary layer turbine developed by the great Nicola Tesla in the late nineteenth century and unsuccessfully promoted by the latter in the twentieth century.

The Tesla turbine is simplicity itself, consisting of a combustion chamber housing a number of thin, closely based discs attached to a spindle. A jet of burning material is directed into the chamber parallel to discs and the viscous drag of the gas on metal surfaces causes them to turn. The gases are exhausted through holes near the center of the discs.

There’s no question that Tesla turbines work. Tesla himself demonstrated working models a hundred years ago. The main problem was that the overall conversion efficiency was extremely low—no more than a few percent.

Recently, some academicians have theorized that Tesla efficiency could be improved to approximately the 30% level—equivalent to an optimized Brayton—and a couple of startups apart from Phoneix have attempted to sell improved designs. But Phoenix claims forty not thirty percent and the claim rests upon the much higher efficiencies to be had from pulse detonation.

Is there anything to the claim? We don’t know. We have interviewed Rieli who clearly has an extensive background in mechanical engineering and who certainly talks the talk, but he did not disclose how pulse detonation is achieved in his design nor how the associated problems of noise and vibration are minimized.

Rieli faces the same problem of most ICE innovators today, attempting to compete with entrenched and proven technologies whose supporters are immensely rich and powerful concerns. His company does not produce production engines only prototypes and kits for experimenters, the common lot of most engine innovators today.

Even with a simplified design such as the Tesla, the costs of small production runs and custom fabrication are extremely high and tend to make the products noncompetitive. In order to price the product competitively the manufacturer simply has to acquire his or her own tooling which in turn requires massive investment, probably in the eight figures. For this reason many of the innovators who actually make production models utilize more conventional designs that permit them to use a lot of stock parts. What this means ultimately is that any successful ICE innovation is likely to be a piston not a rotary engine.

In the following section we’ll look at a number of highly innovative piston designs and conclude this series.

YOU CAN SEND DIRECT COMMENTS TO: CHARGEMAG@CHARTER.NET
OR IVONEROSE@AOL.COM

WILL ADVANCED ENGINES BE THE ANSWER?

2005-07-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

ADVANCED EXTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES – PART II

In the previous entry I dealt with legacy external combustion engines, steam turbines and steam powered reciprocating engines, as well as with the perennial also-ran and favorite of environmentalists, the Stirling cycle engine. Here I will move on to more exotic types including Kalina cycle engines, organic Rankine engines, Ericsson cycle engines, alkali metal thermoelectric devices, solid state thermoelectric power sources, and magnetohydrodynamic systems.

First let me note an omission, a fact which should have been included in the last piece. Dean Kamen, the much celebrated inventor of the Segway personal transportion vehicle, has also done extensive research on Stirlings, and has a number of patents on improvements in the technology. Rumor had it that Kamen wanted to power the Segway with a Stirling but could not complete a unit that met with his own requirements.

Ericsson Cycle Engines

John Ericsson, sometimes known as the Swedish Edison, was an internationally renowned nineteenth century inventor best known for his patent on the screw propeller and his design of the Union Monitor, the forerunner of the modern battleship. Ericsson made numerous other inventions, however, and among the most interesting was his “caloric engine”, as he called it, which went through several iterations and upon which he was still hard at work at the time of his death.

Like the Stirling, the Ericsson caloric runs on heated air, but the principle of operation is somewhat different. The Ericsson is not necessarily a closed cycle system, and does not require a displacer to move air from the hot to the cold side of the engines. Rather, the operation is more akin to that of the internal combustion Brayton turbines used in all modern turbojet and turboprop aircraft and in fast turbine powered watercraft as well.

In the Ericsson engine’s first stage, air is simultaneously compressed and cooled by means of a heat exchanger, cooling making the compression process easier and reducing the amount of work required to achieve a given compression ratio. The air is then allowed to expand while being simultaneously heated to maintain a constant pressure. As the air leaves the expansion section at an elevated temperature heat is transferred back via a heat exchanger so that little thermal energy is lost. A high proportion of the thermal energy produced by combustion ends up performing mechanical work.

Ericsson engines represent a very interesting and sophisticated exercise in maximizing thermodynamic efficiency but they have seen little commercialization to date. Ericsson himself achieved little success with design until just before the end of his life when factory production models finally reached the market, mainly being used to operate water pumps on farms. Ericsson built one very large engine of thousands of horsepower that was used to power a merchant ship.

Currently, one small California startup calling itself PROE is attempting to re-introduce Ericssons into the marketplace. The PROE uses a jet engine type turbine compressor and an afterburner to control emissions. The expansion section uses a fairly conventional piston and crankshaft. The engine will operate on gas, diesel, kerosene, and biofuel.

Richard Proeschel, the inventor, is a retired aerospace engineer who spent most of his career developing fuel cells for satellites and spacecraft. His experience with the latter convinced him that the technology is unlikely to succeed in the stationary power and transportation markets which the fuel cell industry is attempting to penetrate.

Incidentally, Proeschel is not the only fuel cell design engineer we have met who has grown skeptical as to the market potential of these devices. The popular press, whose members generally confine themselves to interviewing spokepersons for fuel cell companies and avoid advocates of competing technologies, generally present a very favorable view of fuel cell prospects, a view which we regard as largely unwarranted at present.

Kalina Cycle Turbines

Named after Alexei Kalina, a Russian American who holds a patent on the design, these engines represent some very fresh thinking. In terms of its mechanical design the Kalina turbine is quite similar to the conventional Rankine turbine used in coal fired electrical power plants thoughout the world. The difference between the Kalina and Rankine has to do with the working fluid which in the Kalina normally consists of a combination of ammonia and water. The proportions of ammonia and water vapor are made to vary during the compression and expansion cycles in order to maximize thermodynamic efficiency. The basic principle of operation has been borrowed from the refrigeration industry.

Kalina turbines have been built by Siemens and by an Australian firm called Geodynamics but to date they have won little market acceptance. The Kalina is capable of yielding double digit increases in efficiency over Rankine turbines but only at low operating temperatures not exceeding a few hundred degrees. At higher operating temperatures Kalinas are only slightly more efficient than conventional Rankine turbines.

Most of the Kalina turbines built to date have been designed to run on factory waste heat or used in geothermal power plants where ordinarily the steam emanating from the underground heat source is at a fairly low temperature. The aforementioned Geodynamics has undertaken a project in Australia in which water will be injected into deep “heat mines” located more than 10,000 feet beneath the surface of the ground and the resulting steam will be recovered to operate Kalina turbines. Geodynamics principals calculate that in one small geothermally active region of Australia enough thermal energy can be extracted to provide sufficient electrical power for the entire nation.

The type of geothermal plant that Geodynamics is attempting to build has been constructed on an experimental basis in the U.S. by Los Alamos National Laboratory while a similar pilot project is underway in France. The plants are expensive to build, but they offer one singular advantage over any of the more commonplace renewable energy sources with the exception of large scale hydroelectric installation. These deep “hot dry rock” geothermal generation facilities are extremely energy dense and readily scale to enormous size. There’s no need to cover the landscape with wind turbines or solar collectors. Plants having equivalent outputs to those of large coal or nuclear facilities are entirely possible. Moreover, the size of the resource appears to be very vast, at least in certain parts of the world, among them the western United States.

To be sure, questions remain as to the feasibility of hot dry rock geothermal done on a large scale. We have interviewed geologists on the subject who believe that contractors attempting to build such plants might encounter a high failure rate. That’s because hot dry rock geothermal involves a good deal more than just drilling a hole in the ground and pumping in water. Before the heat resource can be effectively utilized, the contractor must perform a process known as water fraccing where high pressure jets of water are used to fracture rock at the bottom of the well and thus create a large reservoir that may be flooded with water and will serve as a sort a natural boiler for the turbine. At present water fraccing is an uncertain, hit or miss business, and a miss means that the hole has to be abandoned and a new excavation begun.

We believe that the combination of hot dry rock geothermal and Kalina turbines could provide at least some countries with a renewable resource that would require far less construction than the wind and solar plays which most Greens advocate, and would also result in much less environmental degradation because the plants would be far more localized. Our expectation, however, is that no company would undertake the risk of building such plants until the energy situation became desperate, and of course by that time the difficulty in amassing funding could be intensified due to a decline in overall national wealth.

Organic Rankine Turbines

Organic Rankine turbines substitute various organic working fluids for water, hence the name. Among those fluids are terphenyl, pyridine, and biphenyl ether. Such fluids provide greater efficiency than steam at low operating temperatures, and like Kalina turbines, the organics find application in geothermal installations where they are generally indirectly heated by low temperature steam. Most cannot be operated at high temperatures due to the corrosive effects of the working fluids and those fluids themselves present toxicity problems. Organic Rankines have never achieved wide acceptance in the marketplace.

Magnetohydrodynamic Systems

This is an interesting technology that has chiefly been used in powering satellites. The principle of operation is based on the fact that plasmas are highly conductive and at the same time highly fluid. By causing plasma to flow at right angles to a magnetic field one induces electrical current in the plasma which can utilized to do work via magnetic coupling. Essentially one is substituting plasma for the ordinary copper wires used in a conventional generator. The plasma itself is derived by heating hydrogen or water vapor mixed with cesium.

Magnetohydrodynamic Systems are highly efficient but necessitate extremely high operating temperatures and are best suited for concentrating solar plants or high temperature nuclear reactors. Much work has been done in Israel toward developing solar magnetohydrodynamic generators, but so far no commercial products.

Thermoelectric Systems

Commercial thermoelectric devices convert heat directly into electricity by means of the Seebeck effect whereby two dissimilar metal plates impinging on one another produce an electrical charge in the presence of a temperature differential between them. Unfortunately, conventional Seebeck generators are only a few percent efficient because metals are highly thermally conductive and thus heat differentials are difficult to maintain.

DARPA has sponsored quite a few research projects in recent years where various crystalline compounds were substituted for metals with higher conversion efficiencies as a result but practical generators remain an elusive goal.

A couple of other technologies show promise as well. Alkali metal thermoelectric devices, which may use hydrogen as well as alkaline materials, use a heat source and a catalytic membrane to strip electrons from the working fluid. These devices are somewhat analogous to fuel cells. Johnson Electromechanical Systems appears to be the sole manufacturer active in this field today and these devices have yet to find real markets outside of remote power for satellites—the market of first and last resort for exotic energy technologies. These devices require a motor in order to do mechanical work.

CoolChips, LLC, a British firm, has an interesting thermoelectric technology where electron flow takes place across a hard vacuum via quantum tunneling effects within a wafer construction resembling a semiconductor. Dissimilar metals are used and the insulating effects of the vacuum conspire to raise thermal efficiency. CoolChips claims efficiency of over 50% and has a patent on a propulsion system for vehicles where fuel is burned in a combustion chamber and the thermal energy is used to drive the coolchips. The electricity is then used to power an interesting multi-pole motor developed by a sister company called Chorus Motors.

CoolChips has received extensive funding from Rolls Royce and has received favorable attention in the scientific press. But whether the technology will ultimately achieve commercialization remains to be seen. We think CoolChips is most likely to succeed in the field of refrigeration, not in power generation.

What’s in the Future?

We think more of the same. Rankine turbines will continue to predominate in large scale electrical generation which will increasingly favor coal. In competitive markets clean coal technologies will fail on the basis of cost and the world’s air will grow dirtier yet and more laden with carbon dioxide

Although certain external combustion engines, including Stirlings, Ericssons, Kalina turbines, alkali metal thermoelectric devices, and magnetohydrodynamic systems may provide efficiencies rivaling those of fuel cells and superior to those diesel engines, we see the diesel predominating in small scale power generation for the indefinite future. Indeed, for a number of reasons, we think diesel engines are poised to replace spark ignition engines eventually in the key market of transportation with the United States probably being the last holdout for traditional gasoline engines. But all of these are subjects for future posts.

HEAT ENGINES, PART 3

2005-07-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

HEAT ENGINES, PART III - EXTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINESby Daniel Sweeney

External combustion engines we have already defined as those utilizing an external heat source to energize an internal working fluid. Such engines once ruled the industrial world but today many people assume that they have ceased to exist, and among alternative energy advocates, only one such design, the venerable Stirling cycle engine, excites much interest.

In truth, however, external combustion engines are still very much with us, and are used to generate most of the world’s electrical power. Where they have been eclipsed by internal combustion engines is in the area of transportation, but even there the transition came much later than many people assume and is not complete today.

The question here is should heat engines continue to play a major role in electrical generation, and are they susceptible to improvements that would regain them a place in transportation and portable power? To answer that question we must first look over the family of external combustion engines and examine their suitability to various applications.

Major Types

External combustion engines can be classified either by working fluid or by mechanical design though the two are somewhat interrelated. A further division involves whether the working fluid cycle is open or closed, that is whether the working fluid must be replenished.

Principal working fluids are six in number, steam, hot air, hydrogen, helium, mercury vapor, and organic fluids with low boiling points such as Freon. Steam has been used in the overwhelming majority of engines made recently and in the past.

External combustion engines can take any of the basic forms we find in the internal combustion segment. There are piston engines, turbines, and various other kinds of rotary engines including Wankels. But there are, nonetheless, a few basic distinctions between external and internal combustion engines regarding mechanical design. First of all, there are no four stroke external combustion engines. All are two stroke because there is no need for an intake or compression stroke. Second, the aforementioned Stirling engine represents a basic mechanical design without parallel in the internal combustion category.

If we turn to applications, we find that external combustion engines are alive and well in coal fired generating plants and nuclear plants, though, strictly speaking, nuclear plants do not utilize chemical combustion to heat the working fluid. In both cases steam is normally the working fluid, and the steam itself drives a large, multi-stage turbine which itself turns a generator.

As a matter of interest, it is possible to utilize coal preparations in internal combustion turbines and the efficiency of these is higher than that of the external combustion variety. At least one company, Clean Energy Research in Sacramento, CA, is attempting to sell the industry on this approach. I wish them luck because their turbine if combined with carbon sequestration is purportedly zero emission. Still, the electrical utility industry has not been friendly to startups, and the carbon sequestration process itself would probably more than offset the gains in efficiency produced by their design.

Steam was extensively used in transportation much later than is generally assumed. Diesel powered locomotives were rarities until the late nineteen thirties and steam hung on in many locales through the fifties. In fact, steam locomotives are still built today, albeit in very small numbers, and some utilize innovative engine designs that borrow from the jet aircraft industry.

Almost all large ships used steam up through the nineteen forties including most naval vessels. World War II was largely fought with steam navies. Steam was only gradually displaced by diesel in the fifties and sixties, and steam is still used in large liquid natural gas tank ships and of course in atomic naval vessels. Elsewhere, however, diesel is absolutely dominant, though internal combustion turbines burning kerosene are used in fast naval patrol vessels and in few yachts.

Most of us have some familiarity with the steam cars of a hundred years ago and their inability to compete effectively with internal combustion, but obviously the same state of affairs did not obtain in shipping or rail transport where steam survived and flourished for another fifty years.

So why was steam eventually supplanted?

Steam engines, and all other external combustion engines, for that matter, like to run at a a steady state. That is a grave disadvantage in an automobile, though it is of less significance in trains and large ships.

Steam itself is a way of storing potential energy and the process of producing the steam is not instantaneous. If the steam in the boiler is rapidly depleted to accelerate the engine, it cannot immediately be replaced, and, in fact as one injects water into the boiler to produce a new “head of steam” the temperature plunges and the steam pressure momentarily drops. With a steam engine you can’t just “give it the gas”. The best you can do is use two or more boilers so that you always have something in reserve, but that in itself compromises efficiency. And that’s why steam cars never really had a chance. Some very ingenious attempts to address these shortcomings were made by Abner Doble, an American engineer who built steam cars of Rolls Royce quality and impressive performance in the twenties and thirties (Howard Hughes was a customer), but Doble’s very complex and expensive engines full of servo mechanisms and solenoids were never more than curiosities.

On ships and locomotives steam’s liabilities in this regard were not very significant, but there the relative inefficiency of steam compared to diesel internal combustion engines doomed the older technology. Shippers and railroads make more profit when they spend less money on fuel.

Can steam ever make a comeback in transportation? We think it’s highly unlikely unless the shipping industry, facing a severe shortage of fossil fuel, takes another look at nuclear propulsion (for various reasons hydrogen powered fuel cells on ships appear to be an enormous stretch). The safety and security problems that would be associated with marine atomic propulsion on a massive scale would be of such magnitude that we don’t see it happening, at least with conventional fission reactors.

We would point out, however, that a few companies have made serious efforts to develop modern steam engines recently. A Germany company calling itself Enginion developed what it calls a porous boiler with claimed thermal efficiency greatly exceeding the prior art and an accompanying rotary engine of undisclosed design. Enginion claims an overall efficiency exceeding 60% which we find very difficult to believe. Enginion designed and built a pilot run of steam automobile engines which were extensively tested in vehicles by Skoda of the Czech Republic but never put into production. A large German truck engine maker whose name escapes us also prototyped and tested a steam propulsion engine, but, again, no commercialization.

A very interesting rotary steam engine called the Henry engine after its inventor was briefly sold a few years ago. The inventor, since deceased, was literally residing in a lunatic asylum at the time he conceived the project but the part of his brain devoted to mechanical engineering was in top working order (he was also a chess prodigy). It’s truly an ingenious design but in the saturated stationary power market it went nowhere.

The Stirling Cycle Engine

The Stirling engine is named after its inventor, one Robert Sterling, a Scottish minister and amateur inventor (1780 – 1878). Stirling led his flock in the industrial region of Scotland and was dismayed by the number of accidents that befell the members of his congregation involving burst boilers on factory steam engines. Fortunately, he had devised an alternative while barely out of his teens.

Stirling’s engine represents extraordinarily original thinking and a radical departure from all prior heat engine design. Its simplicity is staggering. In its most basic form it consists of only two sections, a power cylinder and power piston, joined to a displacer cylinder and piston. Here’s how it works.

The whole system is self contained and gas tight. Stirling’s own engine contained trapped air but most contemporary designs use helium. An external furnace communicates with one end of the power cylinder and heats the gas within, causing it to expand and push the power piston on the power stroke. A displacer piston, generally but not always actuated by a camshaft, rises to the top of its own cylinder which communicates with the power cylinder, sucking in the heated gas. The displacer cylinder is not heated and is generally provided with some form of heat sinking. It cools the gas, causing it to contract, where upon it is pushed back into the power cylinder by the down stroke of the displacer piston and then compressed by the power piston. Then the cycle begins again.

In a sense the Stirling might be considered a kind of quasi-four stroke engine because there is only one power stroke per four movements of the two pistons, but the analogy is inexact because two pistons rather than one are involved in the process.

Stirlings have theoretically very high thermodynamic efficiency, approaching the Carnot limit, are inherently safe and robust, and are mechanically simple. They’re also dead quiet. So what’s not to like, and why aren’t they used to any extent today?

It turns out that there are all manner of not so obvious design problems that aren’t very amenable to easy solutions.

First of all, Stirlings require hydrogen or helium to operate efficiently because air is not thermally highly conductive and doesn’t transfer thermal energy effectively to the displacer cylinder. That means they have to be sealed very tightly which is very difficult if the cylinders are communicating with drive mechanisms through the cylinder walls. Kockems of Sweden, one of the few manufacturers, reportedly spent over $100 million researching seals.

All that mechanical movement not involving the power stroke ain’t good either and spells poor mechanical as opposed to thermodynamic efficiency. Moreover, the Stirling tends to be large and heavy for its output—a problem with all external combustion units—because the combusted gas and the working fluid are not one in the same, and reside in different compartments.

Another problem is the rather lengthy interval—up to several minutes—required for the engines to reach full power output. In this respect they suffer similar liabilities to steam engines but liabilities that are more intractable because a flash or fire tube boiler of the sort used to raise steam quickly can’t be used to heat air in a cylinder. Simply put, it’s difficult to put enough heating surface inside a cylinder to obtain very rapid heat transfer to the working fluid.

Many improvements on the basic design have been proposed or attempted, including free piston designs where the displacer piston is resiliently connected to power piston within the closed cavity containing the working fluid, and linear generators which utilize magnetic rather than mechanical coupling to draw power from the power piston. Much work has also been done of recuperators for transferring waste heat to the air intake of the combustion chamber.

Stirlings have continued to fascinate mechanical engineers through the nearly two centuries since the good Reverend set thoughts to paper, and countless variants have been devised. Only a few have been commercialized however. Kockems makes large units for use on naval submarines where their silence is appreciated. The company is also seeking a market in solar electrical generation where solar concentrators would be used to heat the helium without the necessity of a boiler. Solo of Germany, a major manufacturer of two cycle gasoline engines, also makes Stirlings intended for solar installations. The Kockems and Solo products are large and very expensive.

A few companies make smaller Stirlings. STM, an American startup, has been making medium output units for distributed onsite power, while WhisperTech and Victrex make very small units for off grid power and for use on boats. American Sterling makes industrial units that use waste heat from industrial processes as a thermal source.

In the past larger companies have taken an interest in the technology. Dutch Philips, the giant electronics firm, sank tens of millions of research dollars into Stirling technology in the seventies with a view to creating a new automotive power plant and also a solar generator. They abandoned the project but sold some of their intellectual property to GM which actually built several prototype vehicles, prompted by fears of fuel shortages in the wake of the seventies gas crises. GM Stirlings worked after a fashion but predictably exhibited poor acceleration and proved costly to manufacture. One could conceive of a Stirling working satisfactorily in a hybrid vehicle, but the design has thus far proved physically incapable of delivering the surge of power most drivers expect and demand. It’s really a steady state machine, right at home in a submarine or solar generating plant, but not on the highway.

One American company, Quiet Revolution Motor Company, has designed a Stirling for light aircraft. The design, which places the power and displacer pistons in a nested configuration within the same cylinder and uses hydraulic fluid both to seal the cylinder and to operate a fluid transmission is extremely ingenious, and would appear to ameliorate at least one of the Stirling’s principal problems, it’s bulk and consequent low power density. Quiet Revolution has suspended efforts to commercialize the aircraft unit, however, and is now focused on the stationary power market.

The Quiet Revolution machine appears to have great merit, but execution is everything and only field testing could reveal if it fulfills its promise. Our own guess is that an aircraft Stirling is a real long shot. The most significant innovation in light aviation today is the supercharged, two stroke, direct injection diesel, a design which offers excellent power density and fuel efficiency, and can be made very quiet and low in emissions. Several manufacturers are introducing these units at this time and we believe that they will capture a large part of that market as high octane aviation fuel becomes less and obtainable. We believe that subsequently these same designs will spread to marine and stationary power markets, anywhere where the size and weight of four stroke diesels puts them at a disadvantage.

Where Stirlings are most likely to find a home is in large solar concentrating generators which have yet to be commercialized on any scale but which are subject to pilot implementations both in the U.S. and in Spain. If this technology achieves a cost parity with wind it could play a major role in alternative energy generation, but that remains to be seen.

Our next installment will deal with other types of external combustion engines. After heat engines we aim to tackle the weighty subject of the hydrogen transition and what it might entail in terms of modifications in the electrical grid.

HEAT ENGINES, PART 2

2005-07-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
HEAT ENGINES, PART II – A LACK OF ADVOCACY

Designers of new types of heat engines almost never show up at alternative energy conventions or finance conferences. The engines themselves are generally ignored in discussions of peak oil or global warming or the hydrogen economy, and most environmentalists have no idea they even exist. In fact I have found that among the relatively few analysts in the field of alternative energy, most know almost nothing about the subject, and I’ve given more than one informal tutorial on the subject. So if, as I indicated in the previous post, further development of heat engines is more likely to ease our immediate problems concerning a carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere and declining reserves of fossil fuels than fuel cells, how come engines remain below the radar screen, so to speak?

I think that there are a number of reasons why innovation in the field of heat engine design goes so unrecognized.

First of all, almost all of the innovation is incremental. All of the primary heat engine designs were invented long ago and the fundamental design possibilities have been exhausted. What we have today are embellishments and refinements, albeit improvements of considerable significance.

Second, the barriers to market entry are simply more evident than is the case with fuel cells. Fuel cells are something like atomic energy was in the nineteen fifties, a new technology so seemingly marvelous that its triumph appears both inevitable and obvious—so obvious as to discourage any careful consideration of the new technology’s real suitability for the markets it addresses. Innovative heat engines, on the other hand, are close enough to existing designs that one can see them within a clearly defined competitive context.

And that context, as it happens, is pretty daunting. In most of the niche markets for engines the manufacturers are few and well entrenched and enjoy oligopoly status. Stationary power, portable power, backup power, automotive, power tools, marine, and aviation—in every market there are very well accepted designs and very well established relationships between the engine makers and the industrial customers for the engines in the cases where they aren’t one and the same. In the automotive field, the single biggest market, forget it. No auto maker is going to buy an innovative design from a startup—not under any circumstances. There is but one single instance of a truly innovative engine being purchased by a major auto manufacturer that being NSU’s acquisition of the Wankel design in the nineteen fifties. Other than the Wankel, the only other success in any market is the adoption of direct injection by two stroke engine makers in the last few years, most of them licensing either the Orbital Engines or Ficht designs. Unquestionably this is encouraging, but it is well to remember that two stroke designers were facing grave losses because they could not meet toughened emissions requirements in many countries. Direct injection saved their bacon by bringing emissions in line with those of four stroke designs.
What about microturbines, that much heralded technology that garnered much publicity in the late nineties? It may be too soon to say that microturbines will not succeed in distributed power applications, but sales so far have been unimpressive.

Perhaps at this point it might be well to indicate where research is currently focused on improving heat engine design and what entities both corporate and governmental are involved in such research.

Most research is rather narrowly focused on improving one or at most a few aspects of established commercial designs. Perhaps the most heavily researched area in heat engine design in recent years has been what is known as direct injection of fuel with air intake occurring separately, a technique which has always characterized conventional diesel engine but which is now being extended to gasoline engines, particularly two cycle gasoline engines. Direct injection has the potential for improving both the efficiency of an internal combustion engine and reducing its emissions. Why this is so will be explained in a future posting but it is indisputably true. Direct injection is used in all compression ignition diesel engines and is the main factor behind their superior efficiency in respect to spark ignition engines (diesels are approximately twice as efficient as gasoline engines.)

Direct injection gasoline engines are quite difficult to design, and Mazda currently makes the only such engine for automotive use (developed at a cost of $110 million) but expect to see others in the future as the price of gasoline continues to climb.

Another area subject to considerable research is pulse detonation. Pulse detonation is the most efficient way to burn fuel and results in the lowest emissions. What happens during the process is that a shock wave forms in the combustible mass and propagates outward at supersonic speeds igniting all of the fuel almost instantaneously and extracting all of the fuel’s available energy.

If it sounds like an explosion, that’s exactly what it is and therein lies the problem. Attempts to harness pulse detonation in reciprocating engines have always come to grief because of the stresses the shock wave places on the engine. Engine knocking is in fact a pulse detonation and we all known what that can do an engine.

Pulse detonation is actually much better suited to a rotary engine where the rotary device is moving continuously than stopping at dead center where it must endure the shock of the pulse. Pratt Whitney, the aircraft and industrial gas turbine manufacturer, claims to be working on a pulse detonation turbine, and two small startups, Quasiturbine, located in Quebec, and Phoenix Navigation, headquartered in Munising, Michigan, also claim to have developed rotary engines utilizing this principle.

Finally, there is a significant amount of research going on in the area of what are known as continuously variable transmissions which are able to vary gear ratios between the engine and wheels automatically over an infinite range of gradations so as to optimize power transfer. Such transmissions, called CVTs for short, offer the highest possible efficiency combined with the convenience of an automatic transmission.

Leonardo Da Vinci conceived the CVT at the beginning of the sixteenth century and a multitude of design variants appeared by the end of the nineteenth century. Since then dozens of different designs have been prototyped but commercial examples have been relatively few in number, largely due to durability problems. General Motors’ famous but problematic Dynaflow from the nineteen fifties is the by far the best known, but the biggest market to date for the devices is the snowmobile. CVTs are also used in tractors, motorcycles, and military vehicles.

Finally, we have electric hybrids, an area of fairly extensive research today. Hybrids, of course, go beyond the design of heat engine itself to include the generator and the motor but they necessitate modifications in the heat engine and they considerably augment its efficiency. Most of the research effort has to focus on the electrical portion of hybrid, however, because that is most in need of improvements. Expect breakthroughs in motor and generators in the future and probably in storage batteries as well.

In the next installment I shall consider the neglected category of external combustion engines of which only one type, the Stirling cycle engine, has received any significant degree of attention from the alternative energy community. I will certainly cover the Stirling but I will also say something about its neglected cousin, the Ericsson engine, and I shall even say something about the possibility, admittedly remote, of some slight revival of steam.

HEAT ENGINES & FUEL CELLS

2005-06-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
HEAT ENGINES AND FUEL CELLS
by Daniel C. Sweeney, Ph.D

Within the overall alternative energy scene there is a curious neglect of what are known as heat engines which today constitute the overwhelming majority of mechanical power sources in all settings—transportation, stationary electrical power generation, and portable devices such as power tools. The general assumption seems to be that fuel cells combined with electrical motors are going to take over from the internal and external combustion engine, and that by this means we will manage to save ourselves from global warming and the depletion of fossil fuel reserves.

Four years ago when I began to write about energy there was no bigger proponent of fuel cells than myself and no more staunch believer of the above thesis. I was absolutely convinced that fuel cells were on the verge of happening in a very big way and that they would decisively displace conventional heat engines within a few decades. I decided then on the basis of my admittedly limited knowledge but boundless enthusiasm for these devices that if I were to have any relevance as a reporter and commentator on new energy technologies I would have to educate myself thoroughly on the subject of fuel cells.

I did, and I reluctantly reached the conclusion that fuel cells were unlikely to move out of the niche markets they currently occupy within any time span that would be acceptable to knowledgeable investors. How I reached this conclusion will be the subject of future postings. Suffice it to say that the current limitations and liabilities of fuel cells hinge upon a multitude of physical factors—that is, there is not merely one or two deficiencies that have to be overcome. The chemistry and materials technology is simply not there to permit the manufacturing of rugged, reliable units at any reasonable price now or any time soon. Whether fuel cells can be brought to a level of practicality that would give them a fighting chance in the marketplace is more difficult to say. My guess is that if a sufficiently enormous research budget were made available one might place even odds upon the outcome---in other words, there’d be roughly a fifty percent chance of success. The problem is that past failures are going to ensure that private investment for that kind of research will not be forthcoming which throws the whole burden of development back on the universities and national labs. Unfortunately, research budgets for the latter are not going up nor will they any time in the mid term. Hence unless some researcher comes up with an entirely new kind of fuel cell that neatly bypasses all of the problems of existing designs, we’re not likely to see many fuel cells on the market.

Therefore in the ensuing two or three decades, heat engines, that is internal and external combustion engines, will continue to produce almost all of the mechanical power in the world. Very likely they will be doing so with a dwindling supply of fuel. Will this lead to improvements in efficiency? And are significant improvements even possible?

I will explore these issues in detail in following posts and will examine various designs fairly exhaustively. But I’d like to make a few introductory remarks here.

Heat engines, excepting the jet aircraft engine, utilize heat, generally but not always from combustion, to raise the temperatures of gases which are then permitted to expand in confined spaces bounded by moving parts. The moving parts, known as actuators, are pushed or pulled by the motions of the fluid. Examples of such actuators would be the pistons in a reciprocating engine or the blades in a turbine.

Heat engines are divided into two broad groupings, external combustion engines and internal combustion engines. External combustion engines use fuel or some other heat source to raise the temperature of an internal working fluid such as steam, hot air, helium, etc. In an internal combustion engine, on the other hand, the working fluid consists of the products of the combustion of the fuel, namely the gas and vapor that are the fuel’s waste products.

Heat engines of recognizably modern form date back to the early eighteenth century when steam power was first harnessed to drive industrial machinery. In the nearly three hundred years since, a large number of distinct designs have been developed, only a few of which have found widespread acceptance.

Because of the tremendous design diversity within the broad category of heat engines, it is very difficult to generalize about them. Some heat engines are highly efficient while others exhibit very poor efficiency. Some put out tremendous amounts of power per unit of mass or volume, others don’t. Different designs vary greatly in their power curves, that is, the relation of power output to rotational speed, in their tendency to noise and vibration, their generation of waste heat—the behaviors of the different designs and different optimizations of the same designs are so diverse that one almost despairs of providing an overview of the subject.

In this light, I find it remarkable that so many commentators on alternative energy tend to view heat engines, especially internal combustion engines, as fairly equivalent to one another. Advocates of fuel cells, particularly, like to cite the relative inefficiency of heat engines as compared to fuel cells, and to point out—correctly, in fact—that all heat engines are subject to what are known as Carnot limits after the French mathematician who developed the relevant formulae, whereas fuel cells are not bound by similar constraints. One finds uncritical repetition of these statements everywhere on the Web to the point where they virtually preclude discussion of the prospects of heat engines in the mid term.

The truth is that in practical terms heat engines can be made just as efficient as fuel cells. Moreover, they can be made much smaller and lighter per a given a power output. Furthermore, the operating life of well designed heat engines is incomparably greater than that of any fuel cell made to date. In addition, they can be manufactured far more easily and less expensively than fuel cells. And finally their mechanical, chemical, and thermodynamic attributes are better understood than is the case with fuel cells.

If one had to wager as to which technology could better address the energy problems of the present, the heat engine would be the better bet. In future posts I’ll explain why.

GOVERNOR GREENHOUSE?

2005-06-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
On the first of June, last Wednesday, Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger announced a series of ambitious target goals for curbing the emission of greenhouse gases. The ultimate goal is an 80% reduction by 2050, an 11% reduction by 2010, and a 25% reduction by 2025. This announcement is in sharp contrast to statements by the Bush administration which posits no goals and has consistently taken the position that global warming arising from greenhouse gases is of little concern and quite possibly a myth.

Immediately, upon the appearance of Schwartzenegger’s pronouncements in the press, various right wing think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute took the opportunity to scoff at the Governor’s initiative, insisting that attempts to achieve such goals were unrealistic and would harm the economy—in fact, the usual arguments marshaled against any wide ranging plan for promoting alternative energy.

One such statement, issued by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute and Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, struck me as particularly representative. “There is simply no mechanism by which California will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 2000 levels in five years. …there is no known or even imagined technology that could reduce emissions 80% in the next 44 years.” Michaels also states that attempting to meet such goals would require an exclusive dependence on natural gas which he deems an impossibility, and he further states that increasing the efficiency of automobiles is to no avail since any improvement there will be offset by a growth in the number of automobiles.

So do nothing and simply allow the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to climb inexorably….

It is my wont to focus in this blog on what I believe will happen rather than what I might want to happen. Here’s what I think will happen. I believe that nothing much will be done in the U.S. to curb greenhouse emissions because I am relatively certain that laissez faire, antiregulatory policies in regard to energy will prevail for the foreseeable future. I think that because I also believe that Congressional leader Tom DeLay’s notion of a permanent Republican majority is essentially correct. It may not be correct for the next hundred years, but it will probably be fulfilled over the course of several decades, which is as close to permanent as you can get outside of the dynasties of ancient Egypt. As long as that majority is there, there will be no significant legislation on greenhouse gases. On that, gentle reader, you can bet your ass. You can take it to the bank. You may not like it, or you may applaud it, but in any case that’s reality.

Still, I am not inclined to leave it at that, and I would like to entertain the question, is the good professor in fact correct? Is reducing greenhouse gases an utter impossibility? Is there truly no known or imaginable technology that could meet our energy needs without spewing further oceans of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

There are in fact quite a number of zero emission energy generation technologies that are either at a conceptual level or the proof of concept state, and there are there are two proven technologies that could serve as the basis of a concerted effort to reduce emissions. This is not to say that emission reductions on the order that the Governor is suggesting could be easily accomplished, however, or, further, that any effective plan is likely to be implemented. And, rather interestingly, the Governor stopped short of enunciating measures for actually meeting his stated goals, as if, somehow, he knows that to be the case.

There is also the matter of the geographical scope. Unlike particulate emissions and smog, CO2 emissions are a global problem. One cannot significantly reduce CO2 levels in one’s own jurisdiction even if no CO2 whatsoever is being emitted there. And one cannot mitigate the effects of greenhouse gases on climate on a local level. If California achieves near zero emissions and the rest of the forty-nine states, or other nations, for that matter, are still polluting as usual, very little is accomplished.

That caveat having been stated, what in the way of clean, green energy generation technology is actually good to go?

At present there are only two zero emissions generation facilities that are well proven and capable of wide scale deployment—wind energy and nuclear. That’s it. Photovoltaic generation certainly works and is extensively used in off grid residences and as supplementary distributed power for businesses, but for utility generation it is several times more expensive than fossil fuel at present. Other renewable sources such as ocean energy, geothermal energy, and low impact hydroelectric have fairly serious limitations relating to the total size of the energy resource, siting, and, in the case of ocean energy, feasibility.

Now it is possible in theory to render fossil fuel generators effectively zero emissions. This is accomplished by means of carbon dioxide sequestration where the CO2 emissions are either captured temporarily in a chemical or stored in containers in gaseous form and then released in a subterranean repository such as worked out mine or oil field. Alternately, CO2 can be used to flush the last remaining deposits of oil from aging wells, and much of the CO2 will remain underground after that process has been completed. But two significant problems have hindered the acceptance of carbon sequestration. First, it is largely unproven; no one knows how long the gas will remain in the repository. Second, it adds significantly to the cost of operating a generating plant, perhaps by as much as 100% by some estimates. Clean fossil fuel plants, absent regulatory mandates, simply cannot compete with dirty plants. That’s why you don’t see any. Zero emissions cost money. If it were the other way around, if clean plants were cheaper to operate, you wouldn’t see a dirty plant in existence.

Given the fact that sharply reduced greenhouse emissions just within California’s boundaries is in the nature of a gesture and not a solution, how feasible is it really? In my view, Schwartzenegger’s long term goals could probably be met if the electorate were dead set on achieving those goals and sacrificing whatever were necessary to create a new infrastructure. That’s where things get sticky, however.

A nuclear solution, which is in many ways the most straightforward, would require roughly ten times the current nuclear capacity in the state. Since nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build vis a vis the fossil fuel variety and only apt to get more expensive, and since the public at large is vehemently against them, I don’t see nuclear happening in a big way even if the Republican administration in Washington gets firmly behind them, as they’ve often said they will. NIMBY extends well beyond party boundaries, and damned near nobody wants a plant anywhere near his or her residence. Maybe if things get really desperate on the energy front nuclear will get a second hearing, but it won’t be for awhile.

Wind capacity could be expanded significantly, but the total wind resources of the state might be insufficient to meet the energy needs of mid century, particularly if zero pollution cars come to predominate. Zero pollution vehicles would have to be based on either ultra high capacity batteries or hydrogen fuel cells, and both would probably demand vastly increased electrical capacity. Because wind is intermittent, the only way it could be used as a dominant primary resource is if some of the wind generated electrical capacity were used to produce hydrogen through electrolysis which would then be stored and used to operate fuel cell stationary generators or hydrogen powered internal combustion turbines. And because storing energy via electrolysis generated hydrogen is inefficient, the wind generation capacity would have to be immense. And that’s leaving aside the physical problems in storing large volumes of hydrogen today.

Within the next couple of decades, two emerging renewable technologies will mature, ocean power and concentrating solar. Concentrating solar uses huge reflectors to heat a working fluid in an external combustion engine while ocean power generators harness the power of ocean waves in any of a number of ways. Concentrating solar is probably closer to commercialization and is well suited to California whose eastern desert regions contain vast solar resources. In both cases, however, one is still dealing with intermittent energy sources.

I believe that coal resources will remain sufficiently inexpensive and abundant to meet California’s and America’s needs in terms of electrical generation at until 2050. I further believe that nothing substantial will be done to curb greenhouse gases and that global warming will be much exacerbated by that time. What that might portend might be the topic of some future posting.

WHO ARE WE TO BELIEVE?

2005-06-08T17:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?

It is the Bush Administration's latest attempt to make sure the fox is in charge of watching the chickens.
According to documents that the New York Times has seen, the man the White House put in charge of vetting government climate reports is a man who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases.

And this man, Philip Cooney, adjusted these reports and sometimes, downright changed them.
Why is this of concern to an energy blog?
It is of utmost concern because the Bush Administration does not take the future of the planet seriously and therefore will never solve the energy crisis.

EMERGENCY OVERSTATED?

2005-05-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

By Daniel Sweeney

Recently, on May 15, to be exact, Salon, the well known online journal of political and cultural commentary, ran an interview with one James Howard Kunstler, a writer best known for a decade old work entitled “The Geography of Nowhere”, a keen analysis of the sorry plight of American residential architecture in the suburbs and the dysfunctional lifestyle it has engendered. Now Kunstler has a new book on a new topic, the book being “The Long Emergency” and the topic being the dire changes that Kunstler sees just over the horizon due to the world’s dwindling reserves of petroleum.

Extreme positions sell books, and to prove that point a couple of writers from the Wall Street Journal have just published a book called “The Bottomless Well” by Peter Huber and Mark Mills which reaches precisely opposite conclusions—nothing to worry about, market forces will bring new energy sources online as they are needed, and no reason to conserve—make that second car a second SUV.

So who’s right?

I haven’t read either book yet, but I’m prepared to weigh in on the interview, and in that way comment upon both positions.

First of all Kunstler’s contention that the peak of production of conventional oil is in the offing is probably correct. Something close to a scientific consensus is beginning to emerge on the subject. I am currently preparing a lengthy report on the hydrogen industry, and, in researching it, I have had cause to speak with many petroleum engineers since hydrogen gas is used extensively in oil refining. I can tell you that there is a lot of concern in the petroleum industry about this matter of peak production, though it isn’t making the headlines.

Where Kunstler is wrong and the Wall Street guys are probably closer to the truth is on the issue of unconventional fossil fuels. These are seldom mentioned in discussions of the peak oil crisis, and, when they are, the commentator usually displays profound ignorance of current extraction techniques.

Unconventional fossil fuels are those that, in the past, have been considered uneconomical to extract and to process. They fall into two basic categories, unconventional sources for petroleum fuels and unconventional sources for natural gas.

Now in fact both petroleum and natural gas appear to be reaching production peaks, but since oil is on everyone’s mind due to steeply elevated gas prices, let’s look at unconventional petroleum—some of which is not really petroleum at all—first.

Unconventional petroleum comes in two basic forms, heavy oils and oil shale. Both are superabundant.

Canada alone has heavy oil resources approaching two trillion barrels, possibly as much or more than all of the conventional oil in the world. The U.S. lacks a lot of heavy oil but we probably have more oil shale than everyone else’s put together, enough to produce roughly the same amount of crude, just shy of two trillion barrels, and maybe more. So if you just take the unconventional oil resources of English speaking North America alone, we are in effect our own Middle East.

So why don’t we get the hell out of Iraq, quit threatening Iran, and live off our own vast reserves?

It turns out that it ain’t quite that simple. And to see why, let’s examine the nature of heavy oil and oil shale.

Heavy oil is petroleum, petroleum of high viscosity and high specific gravity. It ranges in texture from a thick sludge to what is known as tar sand which is just that, a stuff resembling wet asphalt and semi-solid in consistency. Incidentally, there is no arbitrary line separating heavy oil from conventional crude. It’s a matter of degree.

The lightest of the heavy oils can be pumped out of the ground just like light crude, but they are more difficult pump through pipelines to refining facilities and more difficult and expensive to refine. The heaviest heavy oils, the tar sands, have to be mined, and are expensive to extract, transport, and to refine.

Oil shales are solid sedimentary rocks containing an oil known as keratin, and, in most cases, no petroleum whatsoever. Keratin is processed into a substance closely resembling crude oil and subsequently used to produce gasoline, aviation fuel, diesel, lubricants, etc. It can also be used to produce asphalt. Oil shales are extracted by one of two means. Either they are quarried and pulverized and the resulting fragments are heated to extract the keratin or, in more recent processes, they are heated in situ in their beds, and the resulting keratin pumped out of the excavation.

The existence of vast deposits of heavy oils and oil shale in North American has been known for a very long time and both substances have been commercially exploited intermittently and on a small scale. But since both have been very expensive sources of petroleum products as compared to Middle Eastern oil, very little extraction has taken place.

But now, with oil prices reaching $50 per barrel, the economics suddenly change. Canadian heavy oil is now competitive with Middle Eastern oil, and oil companies are investing billions in the Alberta fields and in building new refineries. Production has gone from negligible to considerable in the space of a couple of years.

Next to nothing has happened with oil shale in terms of the opening of the fields in the U.S., most of which are located in a very small region of dry lake beds at the juncture of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, but a series of Department of Energy studies has recently been published which report that commercial exploitation is now feasible, and that, moreover, the mining and refining techniques have evolved to the point where they no longer require vast quantities of water as was the case in the past. Since almost all of the shale is on federal land, a simple determination on the part of the Administration could open the land for exploitation.

Significant environmental concerns surround the extraction of keratin from oil shale, but I do not believe that this or succeeding Republican administrations will pay much heed to such concerns, nor to concerns that the allocation of mining rights could be subject to improper influence on the part of campaign contributors—an issue that has terrified preceding administrations and has kept the shale deposits largely off limits to petroleum companies. If rising oil prices are seen to threaten the party’s hold on Congress or the White House, or to exert extremely adverse effects upon the economy, which is precisely Kunstler’s thesis, then, I believe, an oil shale rush will commence, and that vast strip mining operations will begin to gnaw into the shale beds.

So then all will be back to normal with gas down to $1.50 a gallon?

Almost certainly not. Oil shale and tar sand start to make sense when crude tops $50 a barrel, but although they change the whole picture concerning proven reserves, effectively tripling the amount of oil in the ground, they don’t bring down prices in as much as the cost of obtaining gasoline from shale or tar sand is so high. It’s not scarcity that is raising prices any longer but labor and the fact that rendering shale or tar sand into gasoline or diesel is relatively energy intensive.

Which brings up another point. If the energy used to extract and refine shale and tar sand is derived from petroleum products made from these substances themselves, then the size of the reserves becomes somewhat deceptive because much of the potential for gasoline production will be lost.

Still these unconventional petroleum sources are sufficiently vast that Kunstler’s contention that dire scarcities lie just a few years off seems unlikely in my opinion. Gasoline prices will probably remain high, and natural gas prices may become extremely high, but a serious gas shortage will not occur unless there is a major interruption in the flow of oil from the Middle East which will still account for most of the gasoline consumed here since years will be required to get the unconventional sources up to full production.

And there are other possibilities as well. The Administration, if it had the political will, could simply seize the oil resources of the Middle East including those of Iraq, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula, cordon off the oil fields, and remove adjacent populations to prevent sabotage, and provide artificially low pricing and preferential provisioning to the U.S. The ultimate political and economic consequences of such an audacious act would be difficult to predict, but the immediate effect would be to earn the fervent gratitude of tens of millions of Americans. An Administration that would go to war on a pretext, which now appears to be the case, might not shrink from manufacturing further pretexts to launch wars of naked economic aggression—resource wars, as it were. And there is certainly a rich historical tradition for such forays. Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. Cavalry did not invade the lands of the American Indians to bring democracy to the tribes.

Leaving aside unconventional petroleum and resource wars as a source for additional gasoline, it is also entirely possible to produce petroleum fuels from coal. Such products, known as synfuels, can be profitably sold for roughly $50 a barrel, the current price of petroleum, and could further augment the huge reserves comprised of unconventional oil. Again the cost problem remains, however, and high oil prices are likely to exert a drag on the economy. Still, the world and the U.S. can probably adapt without making the wrenching changes that Kunstler sees in the offing, i.e. the abandonment of the largest cities and the return of a large segment of the population to subsistence agricultural labor.

The wild card here actually turns out to be natural gas, not oil. Large amounts of hydrogen are required in the refining process, and today virtually all of this hydrogen is derived from natural gas. Hydrogen can be produced by other means, but not nearly so cheaply as by reforming natural gas, and ascending natural gas prices would greatly increase the price of petroleum products whether derived from conventional or unconventional oil sources. From a bearable price of $50 a barrel, oil might rise to a fairly unbearable price of $75 a barrel.

I mentioned unconventional sources of natural gas. These are basically three in number, coal bed methane, tight gas, and methane hydrates, also known as clathrates, and undoubtedly each will be subject to increasing attention in the years to come.

Coal bed methane forms in coal seams and has not been very economical to extract in the past. That may soon change. Estimates of the size of this resource vary, but it is generally assumed to be much smaller than conventional sources. Tight gas is found in deep rock seams in mountainous areas. Again resources are considerable but much smaller than those for conventional gas. Extraction of tight gas has already begun in North America with no discernible effect on gas pricing. The real questions involve the third resource, the methane hydrates. These are chemical compounds formed when water and methane are combined under intense cold and high pressure. They are extremely abundant on arctic sea floors and may store thirty times as much methane as conventional natural gas resources. Since methane can also be used to produce diesel fuel, these are potentially an extremely valuable form of mineral wealth.

Because methane hydrates are found only in remote arctic and subarctic areas or at great depths in temperate seas, they will be expensive to extract. Techniques for exploiting methane hydrates are experimental today, but good progress has been made to date, and I think they will be extensively exploited in time. There are considerable dangers associated with their exploitation, however. Methane is a highly potent green house gas, and extensive leaks and wastage during the extraction process could greatly increase the dangers of catastrophic climate change.

In sum, fossil fuel resources are adequate for perhaps another century of lavish expenditure even with increasing demand and a growing world population. Add to this the fact that fossil fuel derivatives can be cut with cheap alcohol derived from cellulosic sources, and the immediate situation does not appear too dire if one only considers the adequacy of supplies for maintaining current patterns of electrical generation and transportation.

So is Kunstler simply some cranky curmudgeon with a hard-on out to sell a few books?

It’s not that simple.

First of all, unconventional fossil fuels will run out eventually. They’re not an infinite resource. They’re more like the reserve tank on one’s vehicle. A warning bell is ringing and the warning light is on. Even with unconventional sources, shortages will manifest themselves in a few decades, and a few decades is not a long time to develop abundant alternative energy sources.

The current state of energy generation from wind, geothermal, solar, and nuclear, if one chooses to consider the latter an alternative source, is not such as to permit the cost effective replacement of fossil fuel resources while maintaining current energy usage levels. A world entirely served by renewable energy is conceivable, but the path to getting there is laden with formidable obstacles. In the past successful energy revolutions have been driven by market forces and success has ultimately rested upon cost advantages. Renewables, very simply, carry much higher infrastructure costs because, with the exception of nuclear, they exploit diffuse resources where energy in weakly concentrated. The wind passing over a plain is scarcely energetic at all compared to the expanding gases ripping through a natural gas turbine at a modern electrical generating plant, and thus one gas turbine can equal the output of a thousand wind turbines. And the crowning irony is that gas turbines are much more efficient than wind turbines. A wind turbine extracts only about 30% of the energy of the wind impinging upon its blades while a gas turbine can utilize over 60% of the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the fuel it burns.

If the U.S. or other developed countries is to build an alternative energy infrastructure to replace what is here today, a substantial portion of the total industrial capacity of the land will have to be devoted to that goal, which means foregoing investments and expenditures in other areas—sacrificing for the future, if you will. And who the hell wants to sacrifice for the future, especially here in America, the land of the deficit?

If the U.S. and rest of the industrialized world does not change course, Kunstler’s dark vision could come to pass. It won’t happen as quickly as he supposes, but it could happen later in this century.

In any event, the most pressing issue associated with our current dependence on fossil fuel is that involving green house gases. The scientific consensus on the dangers of global warming and its origin in the release of large volumes of carbon dioxide is now almost absolute and dismissals of the science by such Nobel laureates as Ann Coulter, George Will, and Rush Limbaugh should be taken for what it is, politically motivated propaganda.

One final note: Kunstler in his books predicts the end of the automotive culture due to fossil fuel scarcity, and a return to an era when travel was limited. I do not believe that an industrial society could retrogress in this manner and survive. Countries with the population densities of the U.S. and Europe probably cannot return to nonmechanized subsistence agriculture of the sort he envisions, leaving aside the problems of land redistribution in an era when mega farms are the rule, while the dependence of the developed world on resources imported from all corners of the globe, precludes an abandonment of modern transportation by air and sea. Look at the yield of American farms in the late nineteenth century when the population was less than a third that of today, and then look at the yields of the present highly mechanized system of agriculture. A century ago the U.S. barely fed itself with over half the population engaged in agriculture, and most of the best farmland already being utilized. What happens when you try to go back to that system with triple the population? One doesn’t want to contemplate the answer.

I do believe that further revolutions in transportation are possible which could greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuel, but that is a subject for future posts.

HOW DO WE GET FROM HERE TO THERE?

2005-05-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
HOW DO WE GET FROM HERE TO THERE?
or
Transitioning to a Sustainable Energy Regime
by Dan Sweeney

Before reading this section, it’s a good idea to read section entitled “Why Renewable Energy?” Unless one can advance compelling reasons for change, discussing the process of change is merely an academic exercise. Obviously, though, we believe that change is necessary, indeed, urgently necessary, and we’re assuming that others are at least willing to entertain that notion.
So here’s the scope of the problem and some possible solutions.

Where We’ve Come from and Where We Are

As the world’s most successful large land animal, we humans have spent most of our career as a species living on renewable energy. First it was sun and biofuel—mostly wood, then it was wind and water power, with few things like whale oil and clarified butter thrown in for good measure. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that coal was much used as a fuel, and then to a fairly limited extent, while petroleum up until the nineteenth century was used only in warfare as a component of the infamous Greek Fire.
In short, we lived almost entirely on renewables for countless centuries before so we could presumably do it again, right?
Maybe.
The problem with trying to go back to renewables, at least as they were used in the past, is that the energy needs of a modern industrial society are vastly greater than those of a premodern civilization resting on a renewable energy base. The entire Roman Empire probably consumed less energy for industrial uses in a given year than a single American city does today. Farms and craftsmen’s shops were operated with the muscle power of men and draught animals, ships ran on a combination of wind power and muscle power, and a relatively small number of water mills were used to grind grain.
The low energy output of the Roman Empire and all other societies that did not go through an industrial revolution consigned their populations to a way of life that most inhabitants of today’s world would prefer not to endure, though in fact hundreds of millions in underdeveloped countries still derive scant benefit from modern production methods. In all premodern civilizations the huge majority of individuals—over 90% in all instances—engaged in subsistence agriculture. Rural populations were subject to frequent famines and to chronic malnutrition even when harvests were relatively abundant. Such civilizations were characterized in the main by great disparities of wealth, despotic and corrupt governments, and by the dissipation of what wealth was accumulated in military aggression. Poor societies are rarely just societies, and only in scattered instances, such as the Swiss cantons of the medieval period, did liberty and respect for the rights of the individual thrive.
Marxist historians rightly deplore the horrific working conditions typifying the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but they cannot deny the rise in overall living standards that accompanied the switch to fossil fuels and mechanized production and the simultaneous positive changes in European society including the overthrow of Absolutist regimes, the abolition of slavery and torture, and the rise of representative governments. We believe that a strong correlation exists between a high standard of living and a humane society. Exceptions exist, most notably the fascist states of the mid-twentieth century, but such states did not endure, and generally rested ultimately upon the exploitation of colonized peoples—in other words, real prosperity was confined to the few.
Western society in achieving its unrivaled standard of living has, over the course of the last 250 years, consumed ever increasing amounts of energy, mostly derived from fossil fuel—first coal, and later petroleum and natural gas as well—and, most recently, nuclear. Renewable energy sources, while never abandoned, have not begun to keep pace. Only large scale hydroelectric projects have achieved respectable output and they have often done so at considerable cost to the environment.
Indeed, practically the whole of modern material civilization is based upon the consumption of fossil fuel resources, and what does not get burned to provide energy is processed into hundreds of thousands of different petrochemicals to build the industrial products used by businesses and consumers.
So how does one effect an easy substitution of renewables for the dwindling store of fossil fuels that have made us rich for so long?
The logistics of doing so are daunting, and according to some pessimists are nearly impossible, at least at this late date.

The Turning Point or What Has to Happen

With the exception of large scale hydro, renewables count for less than 1% of the energy consumed in electrical generation today, though, surprisingly a rather higher percentage of renewables is used in transportation, at least in the U.S. Use of renewable sources, particularly wind power, is growing rapidly, but one may question whether current growth rates are sufficient to keep pace with declines in fossil fuel reserves, on the one hand, and on sharply increasingly worldwide demand for energy on the other.
Unfortunately the past provides us with little guidance in this matter. During the last change in energy regime from wind, water, and muscle power to fossil fuel the transition was relatively smooth and nondisruptive. There was no shortage of wind and water power, and the wind and water mills kept on turning and sailing ships kept on sailing all through the transition period. Coal at first was used primarily in factories which needed a steady output of motive power that only a steam engine could provide. Only gradually did coal migrate to other applications where its use was noncritical such as shipping, and there in particular the transition was very slow, gradual, and noncatastrophic. Steam ships didn’t outnumber sailing ships until well into the twentieth century, and that only happened when the price of coal fell to the point where the greater speed it afforded shipping lines grew overwhelmingly advantageous economically. Railroads were another story; they lacked any serious competitor, but their substitution for horse drawn carriages and canal boats was not caused by any shortage of horses. The world transitioned away from earlier power sources to steam because steam power greatly facilitated manufacturing and transportation and significantly elevated the general standard of living. There was no element of urgent necessity, however, and we could have gone on indefinitely with renewable sources had we chosen to do so.
The situation today is almost entirely different. Rather than embracing different energy sources in order to raise our standard of living we’re doing so because we ultimately have no other choice. In a word, we are being compelled rather than being enticed to do so. Renewable energy sources are not, in and of themselves, likely to bring us a higher standard of living, indeed the cost disadvantage vis a vis the cheap fossil fuel that still prevails today will result in an initial decline in living standards because the price of energy will rise. Unless much higher energy efficiencies are achieved across a range of applications coincident with the changeover to renewables, we are likely to grow poorer, at least in the midterm. The total supply of energy will be constrained and so choices will have to be made as to its use.
For example, the energy intensive manufacture of huge quantities of throw-away consumer goods may give way at least in part to the use of available supplies of energy in mechanized agriculture. Air conditioning may become an expensive luxury and even heating fuels may be husbanded and sparingly used as in England prior to the late twentieth century. Conceivably more goods may have to be locally manufactured to avoid high shipping costs caused by rising fuel prices. The consequences of a serious energy shortfall, which is more likely than not, will be felt in almost all areas of human endeavor and could profoundly reshape our material culture.
Those are our long term prospects. Our immediate prospects are somewhat different.
Since fossil fuels are still in the main a cheaper energy source than renewables, there is no immediate incentive to move to renewables beyond a desire for cleaner air and a degree of apprehension about the concentration of remaining oil resources in the volatile Middle East. Only when fossil fuel prices get really high and stay there does the incentive arise, though to be sure, there are other short term solutions to the problem. The United States, by virtue of its overwhelming military superiority, could conceivably seize Middle Eastern reserves and allocate much of the petroleum to itself. It might thereby enjoy artificially low prices while the rest of the world went short. Such a ploy would not be without dire consequences, but it would constitute a tempting quick fix.
Sooner or later, however, everyone has to become more dependent on renewables. The problem is in managing the change.
The natural tendency, particularly here in the United States, is to do nothing until faced with overwhelming necessity, but such necessity simply won’t manifest itself clearly until the situation becomes rather desperate, and at that point a timely changeover will be very difficult. If fossil fuels were heavily taxed and renewables heavily subsidized, market forces in support of change would begin to exert themselves earlier and the change could be better managed, but the tax burden on individuals and corporations would increase, and the real wealth of individuals would decrease—in other words there would be considerable economic pain associated even with a phased, well managed transition. For this reason many would prefer to believe that no problem exists and that somehow through diligent exploration and by drilling and mining in protected areas and setting aside environmental concerns, vast new finds of fossil fuel will be made and the world will go on as before.
Simply put, the citizenry at large do not want to go through a lengthy period of austerity in order to ward off dangers that few believe actually exist. While professional geologists are well aware of the decline in fossil fuel reserves, the general public is not and political leaders do little to inform them. No public official wishes to be bearer of gloom. Only now is this collective ignorance beginning to dissipate and it’s not dissipating nearly fast enough.
So we’re faced with a choice, a hard choice.
If we wait until fossil fuel reserves run really low and total energy output declines significantly, then severe economic disruptions are sure to occur. Even slight increases in fossil fuel prices have highly adverse economic effects, and, in the case of protracted severe prices increases, those effects become dislocations. In such instances raising taxes to encourage the growth of renewables through public policy initiatives becomes more difficult still. In hard times people want to retain whatever income they can produce.
Many presented with evidence of coming severe shortages simply say, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. If we have to embark on crash programs to increase renewables, so be it, but why do it now when we don’t have to?”
The problem with that position is that it is short-sighted. In order to build capacity for the future steps have to be taken now. We can’t afford to wait until oil reaches $100 a barrel or a resource war starts in the Middle East if it hasn’t already.
Why now? Remember that earlier figure of less than 1%? Let’s take a look at what’s involved in going from 1% to 100%, our eventual goal.

Scenarios for Change

The first problem facing any nation resolved to convert to renewable resources is determining what mix of renewables is desirable. Renewables can probably only be established quickly with major incentives from the government. So who among the renewable source providers gets the incentives and who doesn’t? Or, to put it another way, on whom do we bet?

Wind Power

Wind would appear to be the obvious best bet. Wind power is the leading renewable energy source today and seems likely to remain so for some time. At present wind energy is only a bit more expensive than that produced by coal and natural gas fired generating plants and, moreover, wind farms themselves can be built fairly quickly.
Wind, however, is a poor source of primary base load power simply because it is intermittent, and there’s no immediately obvious solution for that limitation. Wind turbines also require expensive and wasteful converters because, although they do produce AC at fairly high voltages, it is at the wrong frequency.
Another really significant problem is that the best wind resources tend to be located in remote areas and so a preponderance of wind would require a huge amount of new transmission capacity. Wind powered generators are in no sense a drop in replacement technology for fossil fuel fired plants. They require a different infrastructure.
There are also questions as the extent of usable wind resources. While low speed designs exist, they also tend to be low in output, and commercial operations today are almost always placed in high wind regions. Such regions have been thoroughly mapped by the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior and they are not only limited in geographic scope, they are very unevenly distributed. Many states have very limited wind resources including some of the most populous, and this necessitates filling less populous areas with wind farms that produce no direct energy benefits to those areas. It also makes the nation as a whole highly vulnerable to catastrophic power outages since primary resources are concentrated in a few areas. Furthermore, much power is lost to electrical resistance when electrical power must be transmitted hundreds of miles.
Yet another problem with wind power is the very low output of wind farms per acres of ground taken up by them. Simply put, wind farms vie for land that could be put to other uses, though fortunately, they can coexist with many agricultural enterprises. In general, large wind turbines cannot be placed in residential areas due to the fact that they generate objectionable amounts of infrasonic sound.
Finally, wind power provides no immediate solution to the problem of what energy source will be used to power vehicles. Public transportation could conceivably run off wind produced electricity but probably not automobiles, boats, airplanes, farm vehicles, and construction equipment. Some have suggested that the transportation industry could transition over to hydrogen which could be generated with wind produced electricity, and that is a possibility. But a rapid transition would be difficult for reasons explored in a later section.
What of the other renewable resources? Apart from hydroelectric power, which is fairly fully exploited already, and is even more geographically restricted than wind, there are only two sources with the potential to be developed fairly quickly, solar energy and biofuel. Both present problems of their own.

Solar Power

Solar generation based upon photovoltaic devices is fine for backup power or off-grid residences but is many times more expensive than wind in large scale power generation, and it’s even more problematic in terms of infrastructure because the solar cells output low voltage direct current that is difficult and expensive to convert to high voltage alternating current. For this reason few see solar panels figuring significantly in large scale generation within the foreseeable future.
Now it is also possible to concentrate solar energy by means of reflectors and use it to heat a working fluid to drive a generator turbine or heat engine or to heat a plasma that can produce electricity directly, but solar generators based on such technologies remain too expensive to be anything more than experimental, though prices may decline signficantly. The fact that various designs have been tried over a period of a century and have remained commercially infeasible suggests that fairly intractable fundamental problems may ie at the core of the technology. Solar resources are arguably more abundant than wind resources, but for solar to assume primacy the technology must evolve in ways that are not immediately foreseeable.
There is a third way in regard to solar energy, the use of thermoelectric devices for energy conversion. Such devices convert heat rather than light into electricity directly and involve thermally conductive collectors. Traditional thermoelectric devices based upon the Seebek principle are inefficient and will always be confined to niche applications, but a number of solid state devices utilizing various quantum effects have been recently developed and appear to have promise. Some of these new devices are said to achieve conversion efficiencies of over 50%, far higher than those for any commercial photovoltaic cell. Whether such technologies can be realized in affordable commercial products remains to be determined, however.

Bio-based Energy Sources
Biofuel is already a very big industry and is poised to grow much bigger. Petroleum and natural gas substitutes are even now being produced in quantities from biological resources and these could be used both to power vehicles and to run conventional generator plants now using petroleum and natural gas. Of all the major renewables biofuel is the closest to being a drop in replacement, and one that would be minimally disruptive to implement. Some redesign of vehicular engines or generator turbines might be required in some instances, but entire industries would not be compelled to change direction overnight.
So why not biofuel?
We believe that at least some forms of biofuel may gain widespread acceptance in the future, but simply replacing fossil fuels with biofuels isn’t that easy.
One thing to keep in mind is that two of the three dominant fossil fuels, petroleum and natural gas, are very easy and inexpensive to extract from the ground. Both involve drilling holes and then standing back and watching the chemical riches surge up. (Coal is another matter, requiring dangerous, dirty, and expensive mining operations.) Biofuels, on the other hand, are produced from feedstocks which are raised as commercial crops. These in turn take up a lot of valuable land and consume much energy in their production if they are grown with modern agricultural methods. The refinement process consumes further energy and much controversy surrounds the issue of whether any or all biofuels can be produced with a net energy gain. If they cannot, and if instead, more electrical energy is required in their production than they yield back when used in engines and generators, then they merely constitute a source of energy storage and one that might arguably be inferior to hydrogen.
Most recent studies suggest that at least certain biofuels can be produced in such a manner as to register some energy gain, but biofuel is still unimpressive compared to fossil fuel, particularly petroleum. Gasoline, kerosene, and diesel deliver an enormous amount of energy compared to what is required to extract, refine, and ship them, and biofuel is unlikely to ever equal them in this regard, though this is disputed by some biofuel manufacturers. If in fact biofuel is inherently significantly more costly to produce than refined fossil fuels, then energy would be relatively scarce and expensive in a biofuel dominated economy.
So that leaves what?

Other Renewables

The other renewables are, in order of their current importance, geothermal, micro-hydro, ocean energy, and nuclear fusion. None of these accounts for any appreciable portion of global electricity generated today, and their future importance remains to be determined.
Geothermal energy is, as the name implies, thermal energy emanating from the earth itself, and it takes two principal forms, active geothermal and passive geothermal. In active geothermal generation steam welling up from great depths is used either to power a turbine directly or to heat a working fluid. Natural geysers where such steam is available are, as one might imagine, quite scarce, and most of the more promising sites have already been exploited. It is also possible to inject water into subterranean reservoirs where the temperature of the rocks is sufficiently elevated to generate steam, and this is known as dry hot rocks technology. So far it has not proven economically justifiable because of the necessity of drilling in excess of 10,000 feet to reach such “heat mines”, but as fossil fuel grows scarcer the expense may be warranted. Geologists are sharply divided as to the potential for dry hot rock generation. Some feel that in appropriate settings, such as the Western United States and Australia, enormous amounts of energy might be extracted in this manner, perhaps enough to eliminate dependence on fossil fuel generation altogether. Others believe that the technology is extremely immature and may never contribute significantly to the overall energy budget.
Experiments have also been undertaken in volcanic craters where pipes have been sunk into lava pits and water circulated through them to produce steam, but such ventures have not been notably successful, and, even should they eventually succeed, could never address any sizable portion of a nation’s energy needs.
Recently a small entrepreneurial company calling itself PowerTubes has developed a micro-geothermal generator which it claims can be used in residential applications and remote power in many geographic areas. If these claims are true, this may be a breakthrough product, but we have seen no independent evidence supporting such claims.
Passive geothermal refers to the use of heated air or water for climate control. It’s fine as far as it goes, but it can’t by its very nature figure in electrical generation though it can reduce the dependence of individuals on the grid.
Micro-hydro or small scale hydroelectric generation is a technology best suited to off-grid homesteads and rural communities with no access to electric utilities. Almost any source of flowing water might lend itself to micro-hydro generators, but the amounts of energy generated in any individual instance are usually quite modest. No one is suggesting that a modern industrial civilization could run on micro-hydro.
Ocean energy generally refers to tapping the power of ocean waves or tides to generate electricity. The notion has occupied the minds of inventors for decades and numerous designs have been conceived and a few even built. To date only a handful of actual plants have been constructed and those have been largely experimental.
The problems in either approach are rather different and so are the technologies employed.
Tides consist of continuous if intermittent flows and in this respect resemble the river currents used in terrestrial hydroelectric plants. Thus they lend themselves to water turbines which themselves represent a mature technology. The problem one faces is that regions of strong tides are uncommon and geographically scattered. Then too, tidal generation facilities have been very expensive to construct. Recently, new schemes for tidal generation have been conceived, and new companies launched to commercialize them, but as it stands, tidal energy has a very long way to go before it has proven itself in the marketplace.
Waves are everywhere and are frequently highly energetic. Unquestionably the hydraulic energy impinging upon our shores from moment to moment is prodigious, and if only a tiny fraction were to be tapped, our energy problems would be greatly eased. Still the fact that a half century of experimentation has resulted in no generally accepted designs is indicative of the magnitude of the technical challenges facing those who would harness the energy of the waves.
Wave generators to date have tended to be mechanically complex and their designers have had difficulty constructing machines that could operate effectively over a wide range of wave heights and survive violent surf conditions. Anchoring the machines and running electrical cable back to shore pose another set of problems. It is difficult to overstate the destructive force of large ocean waves, and all shores that are not sheltered are visited by such waves with some frequency. Not surprisingly, no one to date has conclusively demonstrated that wave generation plant could achieve long term reliability.
Other types of ocean energy generators have been proposed that would exploit temperature differentials in the water to produce mechanical motion and drive a generator or that would exploit regions of strong ocean currents like the midAtlantic. At present such schemes are purely theoretical.
Fusion energy has in the past aroused great interest among those concerned about the eventual unavailability of fossil fuel sources. Fusionable materials are superabundant and the energy produced by even the smallest quantities of them is so great that humanity could comfortably anticipate tens of thousands of years of high intensity electrical generation before such sources became noticeably scarce. So why not fusion?
Experimental fusion reactors aplenty have been built, the first designs going back to the sixties, indeed before the first commercial fission reactors came on line. Such experimental reactors have indeed produced energy, but, with one highly questionable exception, have not been reported to have produced more energy than was required to initiate the fusion reaction. And unless a net energy gain can be registered the technology is useless.
What are the prospects of anyone ultimately succeeding? One would really like a definitive answer to this question, but no one has been able to offer one. Most scientists who have studied fusion believe that a successful reactor is theoretically possible. Its existence wouldn’t appear to violate any laws of physics, and the fact that slow but steady progress has been made over the decades, i.e. the gap between energy in and energy out has been dwindling, suggests that the corner might eventually be turned.
But when?
Unfortunately there’s no easy answer there either. Numerous designs have been attempted over the years and considerable debate exists among fusion advocates as to which is the most promising. All of the major design variants have progressed and improved but none has achieved real success.
During the initial phase of fusion research in the sixties and seventies most scientists in the field predicted practical reactors would have appeared by the turn of the century. Obviously they were wrong. Today most responsible researchers state that commercial reactors are decades away.
The problem in such predictions is that multiple technical breakthroughs in multitudes of different scientific fields will be required for any design variant to succeed. A whole range of problems in applied physics and electrical engineering will have to be solved and solved completely before the technology is ready. Predicting precisely when and if such breakthroughs will take place is obviously extremely difficult.
Some have suggested that if more funding were given to fusion research an accelerated development cycle might occur, but fusion research has already been funded in amounts of tens of billions of dollar—more than for any other form of sustainable energy. The reward for such investment has been absolutely nil to date.

Fission Nuclear Reactors

Fissionable materials do not constitute a renewable resource but they are currently a very abundant source of energy, possibly sufficient to sustain high levels of electrical generation for a longer period than would coal. Obviously there are significant dangers associated with the transport and disposal of such materials and with their misuse in covert weapons programs. Moreover, nuclear reactors are expensive to construct and are not currently cost competitive with fossil fuels as energy sources absent government subsidization. A handful of countries, most notably France and Japan, derive a large percentage of their electrical power from nuclear generators. In many other nations such as our own nuclear development programs are currently moribund and aging plants supply what energy is produced.
In the event of severe and protracted shortfall of natural gas and petroleum, the temptation to resume building fission reactors might become irresistible. They could be used both for base line power generation, a task for which they are well suited, and for powering plants producing substitute fuels for transportation such as hydrogen, syngas, Fischer-Tropsch process fluid fuel from coal, and so on. That such an eventuality will occur in the United States is by no means unlikely because nuclear energy is an established technology, the fuel itself is neither scarce nor threatened, the power plants themselves fit well within the legacy transmission grid, and the nuclear industry has a well entrenched and powerful political lobby.
Whether or not such a state of affairs comes to pass, no one should think that a rapid buildup a nuclear power plants is going to enable developed nations to continue to use energy as they have in the recent past. Nuclear energy will be expensive, probably more expensive than wind, and it may well establish itself as an unregulated monopoly service which would tend to drive prices still higher. Furthermore, transportation fuel produced by means of such energy will be expensive as well. In short, an energy regime anchored by nuclear reactors is apt to result in a declining standard of living in industrial countries.

Wild Cards

If energy shortages grow acute as the century advances, a distinct possibility, then some of the chancier schemes for energy generation will be likely to gain a hearing. Here are a few of them that might be attempted if the world’s energy needs cannot be met with the more conventional renewables.

High Altitude Wind

Wind velocity increases with altitude. The increase is measurable at only a few meters above the ground and when one reaches elevations above ten thousand feet then gale force wind speeds come to be encountered fairly frequently. Since the output of wind turbine increases with the square of the wind velocity, faster is definitely much better.
Serious proposals have been made to launch turbines that would be moored at substratospheric elevations. Some such schemes would use balloons to keep the turbine aloft while another concept, one advanced by Sky WindPower, Inc. of San Diego, is to use a turbine that is a combination helicopter and generator and uses some of the wind force to keep aloft and some to generate electrical power. The turbine uses an electric motor to launch the turbine to the requisite height and then relies on prevailing winds to keep it aloft. A conductive mooring cable conveys the electrical energy to a base station on the ground. The company has constructed a working scale model but has been unable to find the funding to build a full sized generator. The principals of this company are serious researchers with strong academic backgrounds in aerodynamics, but the audacity of the scheme is sure to give investors pause, and, given the fact that terrestrial wind farms can be relatively cheaply constructed, and because terrestrial wind capacity is far from exhausted, we would not expect such proposals to be seriously entertained unless a major crisis were to develop.

Still Wilder

Another startup named Aeolus, Inc. has proposed immense multi-rotor vertical axis offshore turbines of which a handful would produce the output of an entire wind farm. Again the scheme appears to have technical merit, but attracting sufficient investment to proceed is likely to prove difficult.
Some serious proposals have even been made to launch enormous solar generators into orbit around the earth and return energy to earth via microwave. Leaving aside the dangers posed by such a high intensity transmission, the logistics of setting up such orbital generators would be exceedingly difficult. But if more conventional technologies prove insufficient to meet demand, who knows?
Still other entrepreneurs advocate returning maritime transport at least partially to wind power. Conventional gas turbines and diesel engines would be supplemented with radical high lift wing sails thereby considerably reducing fuel consumption. Small craft based upon such principles have in fact been constructed, most famously the late Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso II.
We could go on ad infinitum here, eventually reaching the domain of “over unity” schemes, the current version of perpetual motion, and determining exactly where radical innovation shades into crank theories and projects can be somewhat difficult. What can be said with some certainty is that technologies that are still in the theoretical stage today are unlikely to be realizable in commercial form in time to forestall a crisis in energy generation if the more established renewables prove incapable of filling the gap.
So where does that leave us in respect to strategic planning for meeting our energy needs in the future?
Several interrelated courses of action suggest themselves.

Strategic Withdrawal

Construction of wind farms should proceed apace but with the clear understanding that wind power by itself is at best a partial solution to our energy needs and may never meet more than a fraction of the total demand for energy.
Rigorous assessments must be made of the prospects of immature technologies such as ocean energy, nonphotovoltaic solar generators, thermoelectric generators, and fusion, and financial incentives developed to foster the most promising. This amounts to an industrial policy and some would object on those grounds, but the consequences of a severe energy shortfall are too serious for those objections to prevail.
In so far as possible distributed energy generation schemes should be encouraged down to the residential level. These lead to increased energy security and encourage experimentation and validation of emerging alternative energy technologies. In such a setting a new technology has a chance to prove itself while limiting risk to the overall society.
Equal emphasis should be given to improving energy efficiency in all industrial, residential, transportation, and personal uses. New technologies as applied to heat engines could more than double the efficiency of vehicles and could postpone a fossil fuel crisis for decades. Energy efficiency in regard to buildings could reduce energy expenditures by a further several percent. Improved efficiency in electrical transmission could also make a major difference.
Technologies for extracting clean burning natural gas substitutes from petrochemical wastes such as old tires and discarded plastics should be explored. Approximately fifteen percent of petroleum is utilized in the production of petrochemicals and not all of the resulting products are recycled.
Clean coal technologies, and by that we mean close to zero emission rather than reduced emission, should be seriously considered. Coal is by far the most abundant fossil fuel resource, and near zero emission coal generators, which are possible today with certain new technologies, could anchor a transitional energy regime. Clean coal technologies are close to a drop in replacement for existing generation facilities though there will be considerable expense in implementing them.
Finally, petroleum must be phased out of transportation and quickly. Most of the remaining oil reserves are concentrated in the Middle East and that supply is held hostage to political events and subject to extreme price fluctuations. The economic consequences of continuing to rely upon that supply to meet basic transportation needs are so serious as to demand immediate action to lessen that reliance.
In many ways managing a move away from petroleum in transportation constitutes the greatest challenge in establishing a total independence from fossil fuels and we have devoted an entire section to discussing the matter.

Transportation

The transportation industry today is almost totally dependent upon the burning of fossil fuel to generate propulsive force. That dependence consumes most of the petroleum produced today. Since rapid transportation of goods and individuals is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of our modern economy, this almost total dependence upon a single energy source represents an enormous vulnerability. Any protracted interruption or significant lessening of oil flow could bring Western economies to a standstill.
So what can be done to lessen and eventually eliminate this vulnerability?
Unfortunately, the answers here are as elusive as in the case of electrical generation. There is no entirely obvious technological fix that may be immediately implemented. But there are promising paths to be pursued, some more promising than others.
As in other energy uses, transportation today is rife with inefficiencies. Most gasoline automobile engines are less than 20% efficient in converting the energy of combustion into mechanical energy, while the diesel engines used in trucks, locomotives, and watercraft are at most about 40% efficient in that respect. Aircraft engines in general are highly inefficient.
Furthermore, most automobiles and trucks are aerodynamically suboptimal and far heavier than they need be to protect their occupants. Major improvements in either area could cut fuel consumption even absent improvements in internal combustion engines. Combined with such improvements, mileage might be tripled or even quadrupled.
Still it must be said that the process of improving the efficiency of automotive and marine power plants is replete with uncertainties if for no other reason than that the best and most cost effective means for doing so are a matter of dispute.
In most of the coverage appearing in the popular press on the subject, the underlying assumption appears to be that the internal combustion engine will be phased out in favor of hydrogen powered fuel cells, with hybrid vehicles functioning as the transitional technology. Actually such a scenario represents but one possibility.
Fuel cells at present sell for a minimum of $5,000 per kilowatt, small quantity pricing. At that rate a 100 horsepower automobile power plant would cost in the six figures. Fuel cell manufacturers assure us that volume production could bring down such prices, but how much? We believe that prices have to drop by two orders of magnitude for the technology to be viable, and that such reductions could soon be realized in devices that have previously required precision machining, complex assembly procedures, and expensive materials is by no means assured.
Moreover the fuel cell is but one part of the cost equation. A fuel cell power plant requires an electric motor or motors, preferably high efficiency, light weight, high output motors of the sort that command five figure small quantity prices today. These must be supplemented with complex power management systems and probably with auxiliary electrical power source such as costly exotic batteries and even more costly ultracapacitors. And let’s not forget the fuel storage system, which if hydrogen is used, will be either a cryogenic tank or a high pressure tank made of advanced composites. Both are quite costly today and provide limited range. Again economies of scale would be certain to obtain and costs of manufacturing could decline, even precipitately, but no one has convincingly demonstrated that fuel cell powered vehicles could achieve price equivalence with those utilizing conventional power plants within the near term or even the mid term. The fact is that fuel cells are, to a considerable degree, still experimental devices, and the fact that progress in perfecting them has been so slow is hardly encouraging.
So what are the other options?
Hybrid vehicles are already in the marketplace and do outperform conventional vehicles in terms of efficiency by a wide margin. The rationale behind hybrids is fairly simple. Engine fuel economy directly correlates with displacement, and large displacement engines represent wasted capacity most of the time since their maximum horsepower is generally only invoked during hard acceleration. With hybrids the energy stored in the batteries can be dumped into the system when momentary bursts of energy are required and therefore a relatively small internal combustion engine with little reserve capacity can be used. Furthermore, if the internal combustion engine drives a generator rather than a conventional transmission, the engine can always be operated at optimal efficiency. Finally, considerable energy can be recovered through regenerative breaking where an electrical generator is used to exert a braking action on the wheels and the resulting electrical energy is stored in a battery or ultracapacitor.
The problem with hybrids is cost, and hidden cost at that because to date their production has been essentially subsidized. The power plant of the most successful hybrid, the Toyota Prius, is very expensive to manufacture, utilizing costly motors and batteries as well as an innovative limited production internal combustion engine and a complex energy management system; the company is said to lose money on every sale. If this is to become the prevailing technology for transport in the near term we may expect absolute prices for automobiles to rise. The manufacturer is in effect installing two parallel power plants, an internal combustion engine and a battery powered electric motor, and two power plants are always going to cost more than one.
Some have suggested that the best course for the midterm and perhaps for the longer term is to abandon the hybrid notion altogether and concentrate on producing really high efficiency heat engines. A number of technologies, some proven, some still experimental, exist for increasing efficiency by a factor of two or even three, including new designs of rotary engine, pulse detonation, ram jet aspiration, the Miller cycle, direct injection, and so forth. We believe that enough progress has been demonstrated in high efficiency engine design that it is now reasonable to assume that required gains in efficiency could be attained through these means alone and without resorting to hybrid power plants. Furthermore, such innovative engines are likely to prove much less expensive to manufacture than either fuel cell power plants or hybrids, and perhaps ultimately less expensive than conventional reciprocating engines.
So why not take this route?
Unfortunately, the previous experience of the transportation industry in developing new types of power plants has been rather discouraging from an investment perspective. The one truly innovative design to establish itself in the marketplace, the Wankel engine, took almost forty years and tens of millions of dollars to commercialize. A recent refinement of the Wankel, the Rotapower, consumed $60 million dollars of investment and isn’t on the market yet. To cite yet another example, Mazda’s new high efficiency direct injection gasoline engine involved years of research and $110 million dollars of funding to bring to market.
Most innovative designs build on concepts originally developed in the late nineteenth century. They’re actually failed designs that have been tried before, but which exponents believe can be made to work today with advances in fluid dynamics, materials technology, and computer modeling. And in some cases they can, but even if they can, productization is apt to be a long, difficult process.
We see little evidence that automobile manufacturers are currently giving serious consideration to radical new designs of heat engines, however, and a number of reasons for their intransigence in this regard suggest themselves.
Auto manufacturers have traditionally avoided radical innovation. Bureaucracies that they are, they don’t foster creativity or attract inventors, and at the same time the auto companies dislike paying licensing fees.
Auto manufacturers have tremendous amounts of investments in legacy tooling. Radical new designs would render that capital investment worthless. Finally, the auto manufacturers are assuming that the cars of the next decade will be filled with electrical subsystems, including large onboard computers, electronic transmissions, drive-by-wire steering and brakes, onboard radar and navigation, elaborate information and entertainment systems, and telematic systems complete with multiple wireless transmitters. These will demand deep reserves of electrical power, reserves that can best be provided by hybrids and/or fuel cells.
All this would suggest that hybrids of one sort of another will lie at the heart of any strategy for improving fuel economy. True, fuel cells are garnering most of the publicity but very possibly the professed allegiance of auto makers to this concept is due to government incentives to produce such vehicles. We see absolutely no evidence that a fuel cell powered vehicle could be profitably produced within this decade.
Before we leave the subject of transportation, something should be said concerning other types of vehicles such as heavy trucks, railways, aircraft, and water craft, since in aggregate these actually consume more fossil fuel than personal transportation.
Heavy trucks almost universally use energy efficient but highly polluting diesel cycle compression ignition engines. Because enormous improvements in fuel consumption cannot be had from the newer technologies of fuel cells, hybrid, and innovative heat engine designs, trucks are likely to continue to use such engines far into this century, though they will probably transition to so-called enhanced diesel engines that produce less pollution than the traditional kind. Lower polluting fuels such as bio-diesel may be substituted for heavy petroleum but how quickly or extensively cannot be determined. Fuel cells and hybrids are certainly possible in such vehicles and could be extensively adopted there if government incentives were in place, but whether governments will act in this manner is uncertain.
Ship and boats generally use high efficiency diesel engines. Further considerable gains in fuel economy could be had by a move toward surface effect or air cushion hulls rather than conventional displacement hulls. At least a doubling of fuel efficiency is likely to be realized by this means, though the cost of construction would rise. Fuel cells have also been proposed as shipboard power sources, but existing models aren’t nearly large enough and are far too expensive.
Work is underway toward the development of hydrogen powered jet aircraft but commercial products are probably decades away (the very first German jets were hydrogen powered). Some of the manufacturers of innovative heat engines such as Quasiturbine and RandCam are also eyeing the aircraft market. Fuel cells have even been used in airplanes on an experimental basis. Finally, considerable effort is being devoted to the development of a nuclear power plant for jet airplanes called a triggered isomer reactor, though concerns about nuclear waste hazards could prevent such efforts from bearing fruit. We see a transition to fuel efficient power plants occurring very slowly in this field.
In sum we see vehicle efficiency definitely increasing, but regardless of how much more overall fuel efficiency is achieved, inevitably petroleum resources will be stressed over time if for no other reason than that demand in developing countries is increasing rapidly—so much so that even maximal increases in efficiency achieved within a few years from now may not compensate for declines in production on the one hand and increases in demand on the other.

Prognosis Guarded

Today the technology and economics of renewables are not such that a smooth transition toward renewable energy sources can be anticipated. That such a transition will have to occur is almost indisputable, however.
The best case scenario would be one in which governmental policies in both the developed and developing world encourage innovation in alternative energy technology and ease the gradual replacement with finite fossil fuel sources with renewable energy sources. The specifics of this process are far beyond the scope of this cursory consideration of the problem, but one can cite previous examples of where governmental initiatives encouraged the rapid development of new technology and its transfer to the private sector. Jet aircraft and semiconductors are merely two examples.
The worst case scenario is one where fossil fuel prices climb remorselessly as supplies are exhausted, and where a transition to renewables is delayed until the very survival of industrial civilization is threatened. In such a case funding the necessary research becomes much more difficult, particularly if the competition for the remaining fossil fuel reserves results in frequent armed conflicts, or, worse still, in the deliberate sabotage of fields and refineries by those determined not to reward aggressors seeking their wealth.
One can also imagine an infinitude of better and worse case scenarios between the two extremes but these we need not explore. Suffice it to say that a change under best of circumstances will not be easy and under worst of circumstances will be agonizing. But that change can be avoided is simply not possible.

--Dan Sweeney

THE STRUCTURE OF TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTIONS

2005-05-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

A few months ago, Daniel wrote this account of how transportation revolutions take place in order to better come to grips with our energy needs and challenges.
It was picked up by a professor at the University of Washington and posted on the Internet.
I am reposting it here for your review and comments:

THE STRUCTURE OF TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTIONS

by Daniel Sweeney

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The technologies considered in this issue are supposed to bring about a revolution in transportation, replacing and displacing older energy sources and energy conversion techniques, and presumably bringing new economic entities into play. In addition, it is to be hoped, they will provide the benefits of mass rapid transportation to all of the inhabitants of the globe without the heavy costs in environmental degradation associated with traditional fossil fuels and the legacy transportation systems they underlie.

As may be seen in the other articles in this issue which deal with specific new energy technologies, the path toward a sustainable energy future in transportation is uncertain and will almost certainly prove difficult. And in attempting to see past these uncertainties to the business opportunities that surely await entrepreneurs and investors, it might be well for us to consider the transportation revolutions of the past to determine if any clue to the future of mechanized transportation might be divined from the ways in which human populations confronted, resisted, and ultimately embraced what were then fundamentally new modes of travel.

Comes a Horseman

The first transportation revolution occurred so very long ago that all memory of it is lost to history, and that it occurred at all can only be gleaned from the archaeological record 4500 BC or perhaps slightly earlier: a bit over five thousand years following the last retreat of the glaciers and the end of the Ice Age. The place was the steppes of Russia which was then home to vast herds of antelope and wild horses.

Humans lived on the fringes of the steppes, stalking the herds with bow and arrow, killing occasional stragglers, but unable to live by hunting alone. Already these communities had taken up agricultural pursuits and only hunted when the seasonal migrations of the herds brought them into close proximity with human settlements.

How it happened, one can only speculate. Perhaps it was a ritual, a game, a rite of passage or a feat of valor, but someone captured a horse—perhaps with lassos or snares—and brought it bound but unhurt into an encampment. The horse was then mounted by some intrepid youth who sought to maintain his seat for as long as possible. At some point a horse was broken and induced to accept a human rider and horses were ridden thereafter for ceremonial reasons for some period of time. But at some further point, still well before 4,000 BC, bits and bridles were invented in Southern Russia and whole populations suddenly became mounted and began to follow the herds and to live off them.

Shortly after the first appearance of bridles in the archaeological record, the towns of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, the lands to the immediate south of the Russian steppes, began to acquire walls. Some have suspected that raiding parties from the steppes necessitated those walls. It may be that the first transportation revolution occasioned one of the first social revolutions, the coming of endemic warfare involving whole populations.

That this all happened rather suddenly we can infer from the experience of the aboriginal inhabitants of the New World who began riding horses almost from the moment of the first Spanish settlement. One day a tribe was afoot and settled, the next day its members were mounted nomads—a transportation revolution as rapid as any that has occurred in modern times. In most cases in the transition of a tribe from sedentary agriculture to a nomadism based on hunting, that same tribe would become increasingly warlike, and would regard settled populations much as it did the herds of herbivores on which it fed. As in the case of the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppes, horseback riding and the arts of war developed in parallel.

This first transportation from pedestrian to equestrian proved as momentous as any that followed, perhaps more momentous. The equestrian acquired new means of making a livelihood, a new access to resources natural and manmade, and, equally important, a new outlook. A man on horseback is traditionally an aristocrat and never a slave or an underling. In many cases he is also a warrior. At the end of the New Stone Age a man who could annihilate distance could also with considerable ease annihilate his fellow man.

Even this earliest example of a transportation revolution indicates several salient characteristics of all such revolutions. First of all, they inevitably have a social dimension. New technology always has transformational effects upon society. Second, they tend to be rapid. And third, in many cases they are viral, spreading spontaneously through a susceptible social grouping.

FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE, PLEASE GO TO:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/charge20.htm

ALSO: To see how article is quoted in a major newspaper, please go to:
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/states/texas/arlington/11537757.htm

2005-05-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

Cats always know how to conserve energy

IS NUCLEAR THE ANSWER?

2005-05-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy
We have this comment from Tim Symonds from London:
Hi Yvonne and Dan, the debate in the UK is whether the present Labour government intends to build some more nuclear reactors, at least in part to keep down green house gas emissions. What is your response to the fact alternative enegery nowhere near meets more than a few percentage points of the electricity demands of an industrialised country like the UK?

Here is Dan's Reply:

Response:

You’ve touched on a couple of different areas here having to do with electrical generation. Let’s discuss nuclear first.

Nuclear reactors arouse such passionate opposition from so many quarters that it is difficult to have a rational discussion on these plants. The plants themselves produce no green house gases directly, though of course the residues of reaction are difficult to dispose of, and could, at least in some cases, be weaponized. One can debate the safety of nuclear power endlessly, and I generally refuse to enter into such discussions. What isn’t debatable is the cost of building the plants which is substantially more than is the case with coal or natural gas generating facilities or wind farms. Only if carbon credits are put in place does nuclear appear remotely attractive economically at present and that’s assuming rising prices for coal and natural gas.

Many observers of the nuclear power industry believe that it is at a crossroads, and that unless the public acceptance for the technology greatly increases globally, nuclear power is on the way out. Very few new facilities are under construction, and in the U.S. none has been built since the early seventies.

The economics of nuclear vary from country to country. In the U.S. nuclear plants are more attractive than in some other places in as much as nuclear fits rather neatly into the existing transmission grid—in other words, nuclear plants are more or less drop in replacements or augmentations for the existing network of fossil fuel fired plants. Wind farms, on the other hand, have to be installed in high wind regions and necessitate vast new transmission infrastructure builds. Solar is not economically viable for large scale generation at present so needn’t be discussed at all.

The virtue of nuclear is that it scales very well. Thousands of megawatts can be produced at single facility, and the bigger the plant the more economical it is to run. Wind, on the other hand, doesn’t scale at all, and vast tracts of land or offshore shallows must be reserved for the wind turbines in order to generate appreciable energy.

The U.K. happens to have good wind resources and among the very best ocean energy resources in the world. Most of the energy needs of the realm could be met with renewables without any nuclear expansion, and because the land mass is quite limited compared to that of the U.S., the requirements for new transmission capacity would be rather modest. Denmark already gets 20% of its electricity from wind alone, proving that heavy reliance on renewables is not infeasible.

What it is is expensive, at least in the short run. Replacing fossil fuel fired generators with wind, water, or solar powered plants is to redo the second industrial revolution involving electrification, and one doesn’t have the same dynamics which obtained in the early twentieth century when factory mass production in the U.S. and Britain soaked up electrical capacity as fast it could create and reward electrical utilities with high rates of return. Early electrification was driven by a very reasonable expectation of soaring profits which were in fact realized. Re-electrification pursued for environmental reasons or for reasons of national security does not tap into the profit motive in any very readily discernible way. True, electrical generation via wind power has been a reasonably profitable undertaking in Germany, but it’s not a bonanza, and nobody’s seriously talking about using wind as replacement technology. Frankly, it’s difficult to know how a transition to renewables would play out or if it is likely to occur at all. In respect to electrical generation as opposed to transportation, the coal resources of the world are entirely adequate to support business as usual well past the middle of this century. The real issue in my opinion is climate change not resource scarcity, at least not yet.
Dan Sweeney

WHO WE ARE AND WHY WE BLOG

2005-05-18T20:16:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

We are journalists who happen to be married to each other. We created this blog to bring ideas about energy and the future sources of energy front and center.
One of us (Yvonne) is a TV journalist at a local television station. The other one of us (Dan) is a writer and a technology analyst.

Two years ago, we had hoped to begin a trade publication to cover the emerging alternate energy industry. It would have been a publication to tie together the various aspects of the industry from wind to seawater to transportation breakthroughs.

At the time, when we presented our ideas to established trade publication companies, no one seemed to be interested to back such an enterprise. We then investigated the possibility of beginning the publication as a website. We have such a website up and running, but we are still not ready to launch it. You can look at it at www.chargezine.com.

So for now, we have refocused our efforts on a smaller venture i.e. such as this blog.

Dan is a well-known writer in the fields of home entertainment, telecom, and audio.
He has been an established writer in these areas for the past 20 years. His study on the structure of transportation revolutions is becoming a reference work on the Internet. It is available at:

Yvonne is an Emmy-Award winning television newswriter and producer.
Both of us will try to keep the public informed about the many changes occurring in the emerging areas of the energy industry. I hesitate to use the term "alternate" because energy is the lifeblood of our economy and our way of life. Unless new sources of energy are expanded and developed, we may all have to rethink how we go about our daily activities all over the planet.

An Energy Blog

2005-05-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Charge: the future of energy

This weblog is devoted to staying up on the latest energy technology breakthroughs that will power the world when we finally back away from our dependence on fossil fuel.

Many of these changes are in the incubator stage right now and others are downright hokum. We hope to distinguish between the promising developments and the pie in the sky panaceas being touted around the web.