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A culture of insanity: Algaeworld / Die Algenwelt
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But evaporating water is a potent greenhouse gas - no matter where the water came from. And also the "spent" water has to go somewhere - it potentially is salty due to the evaporation and may contain additives used for growing these algal monocrops. Oh and of course they will want to use GMO algae and large scale nanotechnology for that. They do not mention how much energy is needed to keep the pumps running and cleaning the ponds and all that - this may reduce the energy gain... Looks like at least land-based, open pond algal biofuels are not really a solution to anything. Other models include closed ponds, tubes (very expensive) or ocean based (giant floats) systems, but given the size of this, these seem less feasible - economically and technically.
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
#2
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All biofuels are a huge placebo... algae are better than most in that they don't take up areas needed for actual food... but this is typical of trying to replace sources of oil instead of trying to replace the oil itself.
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#3
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We need to further our technology so the reliance on oil is gone. Algae biofuel production wouldn't be able to cope with the massive demand that the developed countries would place on it.
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Always listening to The Orb: O.O.B.E... ![]() My fanfic "The man who learns only what others know is as ignorant as if he learns nothing. The treasures of knowledge are the most rare, and guarded most harshly." -Chronicle of the First Age "Try to see the forest through her eyes." Réalisant mon espoir, Je me lance vers la gloire. Je ne regrette rien. (Making my hope come true, I hurl myself toward glory. I regret nothing.) |
#4
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Before going green, we need to make our machines and processes more efficient. As many of you know, a gasoline engine is, typically, 14% efficient; a Diesel engine, at most, 50%. Before starting to throw food or dedicating enormous extensions of land to make biofuels, we need to make sure that the product will be efficiently consumed. Unfortunately, there's no way to improve the efficiency of the gasoline or diesel engine. Thermodynamics predicts that those efficiencies are the highest we will reach (or we will have to change the laws of physics, but that's impossible). Replacing oil will take decades, it will certainly happen.
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#5
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#6
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Yes, going completely electric is the way of the future. Electric motors are 85 to 95% efficient in transforming electric power into mechanical power. Electronics makes the electric motor a very versatile machine, but there's still a disadvantage: the batteries.
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#7
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#8
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The problem I see more is that using even more electricity will require massive amounts of new power plants to be built, more landlines and such. Also, the efficiency is a problem (as I said above). And to that adds the problem of getting Lithium and other materials like REEs for the huge amount of batteries and electric motors. All this has to be mined and processed and manufactured, which also costs a lot of energy and produces the usual problems with mines and mine processes. It may be a way to keep cars going, but it does not really deserve the label "green" or "clean" IMO. I think a lot more is gained if the number of cars is reduced, e.g. by easy car sharing and public transport or eliminating the need for too much transport. There is a neat project here locally that wants to put cars in the streets and you can with a membership card just rent it on the spot for a low price and leave it within the city afterwards. The organization then distributes them if they are not evenly distributed. If this is done with electric cars, at least the number of batteries would decrease. A side fact by the way: Did you know where all the sulfur from the de-sulfurized gasoline goes to? It is dumped into the tanks of large intercontinental ships, who burn it over the open sea. So we do not have acid rain anymore on land, but the stuff just was exported to the oceans. And the 15 largest ships in the world produce as much sulfur emissions as all the land based transportation with cars together. Ugh!
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
#9
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Once I read an article about another way to get power out of algae. The idea was a relatively closed system where you grew algae in a sort of tank or bioreactor (which got its energy from the sun). The alage was then dried, burned and used to heat water that powered a generator. The heat from the burn also dried new algae. The CO2 from the process was fed back into the tank to give material for more algae. Perhaps though some nutrients must be added to grow the algae.
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#10
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If you grow them in a closed loop tank and get them out by filtration, maybe add the processed residue back to the water as nutrients, it may be possible. Up to now, such plans are a lot more expensive than open ponds though and there is an issue with algae sticking to the glass surfaces that have to exist to let light in, blocking the light for the algae in the moving water. Overall, this would still cover a lot of land, require a lot of the energy produced by it and still require water and nutrients. But mainly it is way more expensive and certainly will not be built within a few years or decades.
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
#11
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Battery exchange and standardisation is a valid solution, but the infrastructure, both physical (battery exchange points, storage, charging facilities, distribution*) and nonphysical (billing systems, tracking of bevels of batteries in different areas and assignment of more as required, monitoring battery lifecycle). The technical issue of standardisation would probably require the use of multiple smaller batteries (for larger and smaller vehicles, both in terms of available space and power draw) but is not insurmountable. Of course, even if such a system was fully implemented today, then a battery small enough to be interchangeable without removing a significant amount of the internal structure to access it would only be enough for 10-20 miles.
* Exchange load would not be equal between areas, and unless stocks were huge and there was an extensive system to move them around, areas would face over-or under-supply of batteries as people move around. Having interchangeable batteries would, in a very best case situation, require twice as many, and in a more realistic scenario, it could be 10 times as many or more (due to distribution differences). As for electricity demand itself - yes, it will require a much larger production capability (and wind/solar will not be able to fill it due to the peaks and dead times they create - over here and in many other countries, windfarm operators actually sell their produced energy below cost due to the nature of baseload systems meaning that there is often very little demand for it when it is available thanks to its intermittent nature, and they make their actual profit from subsidies and not energy - it would be perfectly possible for them to remain profitable while simply running the electricity to an earth instead of the national grid if the subsidy was still be available in that context), but the efficiency percentage is much higher, resulting in less total energy produced for the same amount by in the end consumer - even if all vehicles were electric and all the electricity was produced by oil, the oil consumption would be less than them using the oil directly.
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#12
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Let's make numbers then: Hydroelectricity (large facilities > 5 MW) Power available at consumer tap = Power at the turbine input x 0.90 x 0.85 x 0.95 x 0.85 = 61.77 % of power at the turbine input (that's the power that water is transferring to the machine). Now, for thermal: Power available at consumer tap = Thermal power at the beginning of the cycle x 0.6 x 0.85 x 0.95 x 0.85 = 41.18 % of power at the beginning of the cycle. Storing that power in Lithium batteries is, nominally, 85% efficient. So, overall we have efficiencies of: Hydro .67 x .85 = 56% Thermal .41x.85 = 34% Comparing that to the Otto cycle, electricity beats it by more than twice its efficiency, the only real competitor is the Diesel cycle. Coal powered electricity plants have efficiencies of 30%. So, it depends from where you are getting your electricity. Quote:
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#13
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So electric cars are indeed wasteful, but of course some things speak for them, like that oil is running out. Quote:
In any case, this all would require huge investments in terms of money, energy and resources and probably there are not enough resources availabe to make this happen for all the 7 bil people on the planet. In times of economic crisis, I am not sure if there will be the political will, money and determination to make all this happen. Technically it may be possible though I do not think that this is really sustainable or a good way to go (electric cars still need toxic fluids, metals, a lot of copper and lithium, roads, energy) Quote:
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Regarding subsidies - all energy is subsidized usually in some way or another (and if it is only a reduced tax, cheap government loans or government financed R&D). In Germany, coal is subsidized to keep the coal workers in their jobs, nuclear is heavily subsidized, there are few taxes and the state paid for a lot of the R&D and the research on the waste storage, solar/wind/biogas is subsidized by giving the owners a minimum price per kWh. I am not so firm about hydro, geothermal or natural gas, but I suspect that they also get some subsidies. There is a reason why a lot of the energy generation is originally state owned, because it used to be a business that cannot make profit unless the people all have to pay more. It is in that respect similar to roads or rails. Of course privatization can take hold, with all the consequences that followed (either deteroating infrastructure, rising prices or the need for subsidies). But I am getting offtopic ![]()
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
#14
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Thermal machines involve all machines that use heat as a source of energy. You can get heat from several sources: coal, oil, natural gas. In my country, most power comes from natural gas-powered plants that are much more efficient than coal plants because the exhaust gases are recirculated in the cycle, so it makes the fuel consumption lower. Quote:
And, yes, the bigger the better the motor is. A small motor, lets say 400 HP is about 85% efficient (a Siemens motor, I think, I may be wrong), but a 1000 HP motor is 95% efficient (Siemens). The same goes to generation, but there's a convergence point where the efficiency will be no better, there's ongoing debate about that and that's where the distributed generation was born. Quote:
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#15
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In any case, I stick to my assessment that electric cars are at least not more efficient, but rather less compared to many means of transport currently in use. Quote:
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So the seeming choice is "gasoline cars OR electric cars" - one of them it has to be. No one will like or consider talking about "no cars", because that is unthinkable, a regression, a decline in standard of living or a return to the 19th century or a descent into a "third world country". So "we" stick to debating over which of the cars is a bit less toxic, kills a bit less people, animals, life on this planet - but "we have to have cars, right?"...
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Know your idols: Who said "Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.". (Solution: "Mahatma" Ghandi) Stop terraforming Earth (wordpress) "Humans are storytellers. These stories then can become our reality. Only when we loose ourselves in the stories they have the power to control us. Our culture got lost in the wrong story, a story of death and defeat, of opression and control, of separation and competition. We need a new story!" |
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