July 29, 2021

The Growth of Solar Capacity In California, Capacity Utilization, and Solar Energy Production.

This post, about solar energy in California, is rather similar to the one I wrote yesterday about Wind Energy in California, with some differences. The remarks on nuclear energy capacity utilization are repeated verbatim here, but as California is one of the rare places where solar energy produces more energy than wind energy, I will compare the total energy produced by solar means in California, with the total energy demand of the State, using the figures from 2019, since these are the most recent available.

Accessed today (7/28/21), the amount of energy consumed by California in 2019, for all purposes, was 7082 trillion BTU according to the EIA Web Page devoted to California. I will use SI units throughout the rest of this post. The SI unit of energy is the Joule (J), and the prefix "Peta" (P) refers to 10 raised to the 15th power, and "Exa" (E) to 10 raised to the 18th power.

A BTU = 1055 J. Thus California's Energy Consumption in 2019 was 7.472 EJ.

In 2019, total US energy consumption was 106 EJ

As of this writing, 17:02 (5:02) PDT 7/28/21, California is under an electrical energy alert:

California's energy demand peak will occur just about at the time the sun is going down. At that time, solar energy will be essentially useless.

The data in the table in post comes from a web page of the California Energy Commission in table to which one can scroll down on this page: Solar PV and Solar Thermal Electricity Production (Annual Totals; Includes Imports)

I have imported the table into Excel, and then did some calculations using this data. Solar plant power ratings, which are often cited by advocates of this form of energy which has failed spectacularly to address climate change after half a century of cheering, are cited as peak power, which is the maximal power the turbine would manage under perfect windy conditions, which in practice are never observed.

It is dishonest - not that anyone cares anymore about dishonesty - to represent a solar plant, which is dependent on whims of weather as well as the time of day as a plant that can, in theory run continuously at full power, such as a gas plant or a coal plant, or even a plant of a type that has been observed to run at 100% (or better) of capacity, something observed only in nuclear plants.

For example, one can find the capacity utilization of all of the nuclear reactors operating in the United States as of 2020 here: EIA Nuclear Energy Page by clicking on the 2020P Excel File in the table on the right. Of 94 nuclear reactors operating the in the United States in 2020, 70 operated at 90% capacity utilization or better, and of these, 24 operated at 100% of capacity or more. Five operated at capacity utilization of less than 80%. One of these was Diablo Canyon reactor #2, which operated at 74.8% of capacity, apparently for refueling and maintenance. It produced 7,348,123 MWh of electricity, or 26.5 PetaJoules of electricity (0.0265 EJ) in one small building. Diablo Canyon #2 operated at 90.4% capacity utilization, producing 8,910,575 MWh of electricity, or 32.1 PetaJoules, or (0.0321 EJ).

In the table below, I have included a theoretical amount of energy that solar plants would produce if they operated at 100% of capacity utilization, using the SI unit of energy, the Joule. I have also converted the power actually produced from MWh to Joule in order to calculate the ratio of the latter to the former to give capacity utilization. I have then calculated the average continuous power of all the solar plants in California, by the number of seconds in a sidereal year, 86400 seconds/day*365.24 days/year = 31,556,736 seconds. This gives the average power in Watts, but the spreadsheet divides this number by 1,000,000 to give a MW. Theoretically, ignoring the inherent lumpiness in wind power which produces what it produces without respect to demand, this gives a feel for the capacity of a nuclear powerplant that could produce more energy than all the solar plants in California. The next two columns give the growth or decline in name plate capacity compared to the previous year, as well the growth or decline in actual energy produced by all the solar plants in California.

I have also included a column for the size of a putative plant, operating at 100% capacity utilization, that would represent the growth in solar energy output, which has increased monotonically since 2007. For example, building a small 100 MW power plant of any type, would match the increase in solar power output from 2019 to 2020. This too, is misleading, since solar plants do not produce energy - in fact the wires connected to them draw power out of the grid, at night. Thus solar plants always require a redundant system to back it up. The fantasy - and it is certainly not a clean fantasy since battery production is neither environmentally benign nor sustainable - is that batteries can deal with this issue. As a practical matter, however, it is dangerous natural gas combustion, with the waste dumped directly into the waste dump, the planetary atmosphere, that is the redundant system.

The table of California's Solar Energy performance in the 21st century:



Comparison of the total production of all of the solar installations in the State of California with the State's overall energy demand, as well as the sum of all solar energy produced in the 21st century by this popular form of energy:



In this entire century, from 2001 to 2020, all of the solar facilities in California, the state having the largest solar capacity in the United States, have not produced even one exajoule of energy, this on a planet where humanity is consuming each year about 600 exajoules of energy.

By the way, I moved to California three times in my life, the first being in 1974. I left the State for good in 1993. The whole time I lived there, everyone was cheering, myself included, for an expected solar energy nirvana. It's not like California was producing just 1.58% of its energy by solar means when people began cheering for it. On the contrary, it's after half a century of cheering.

Some people, myself included, think that the outbreak of massive fires on the West Coast of the United States, as well as in many other parts of the world, Siberia, Sardinia, Australia, etc...etc...etc... ad nauseum are related from climate change.

This should - although it won't - produce some dose of reality about how effective all this cheering, endless cheering, for a putative solar nirvana has been at addressing climate change.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, due to shut because of appeals to fear and ignorance, has been producing today, in California, between 2,262 and 2,267 MW of electricity reliably all day long in two small buildings, the footprint of which, including its parking lot, is about 12 acres of land, located on a 700 acre plot of land that is mostly undisturbed marine chaparral. In terms of average continuous power, two such plants could produce more energy, more reliably, and more predictably, than all of the solar energy facilities in the State of California as well as solar plants in neighboring states that export electricity to California.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant is something of an antique, having been designed around 1970's technology. Its thermodynamic efficiency is around 33%.

I was telling my son, who visited briefly yesterday, about a path, via heat networks, by which the thermal efficiency of a nuclear plant with a slightly larger foot print, might achieve or approach efficiencies of approximately 80%, via a network of Brayton, reverse Allam, thermochemical hydrogen production, supercritical water, and rankine cycles, all run off the same heat stream, albeit not necessarily in this order. The little brat engineer found this argument credible.

By the way, if one spends a lot of time reading the primary scientific literature about displacing the chemicals obtained by using fossil fuels utilizing putative solar thermal plants, like the one at Ivanpah in California, which fries birds in flight, about 6,000 per year. There are thousands upon thousands of papers about solar furnace liquid fuel production published, too many in fact to count. The only chemical energy produced by Ivanpah is the chemical energy available from the combustion of charred birds.

The poor performance of the Ivanpah plant, which sometimes ends up burning dangerous natural gas to improve it's poor performance, may account for the years in which California's solar capacity utilization fell below 20%.

These papers are not, however, useless. They are probably structured the way they are to appeal to popular enthusiasm, insipid popular enthusiasm, but nonetheless real popular enthusiasm, for solar energy to get research grants. The heat source need not be solar however. Nuclear heat is more reliable, and more environmentally sustainable, since it is continuously and reliably available. Continuous processes are almost always economically and environmentally superior to batch or discontinuous processes.

I regard opposition to nuclear energy as morally and intellectually equivalent to opposition to Covid vaccines. Both kill people by appeal to popular ignorance.

Solar energy has not addressed or even slowed climate change; it is not addressing or slowing climate change; it will not address or slow climate change. It may be time to wake up.

The rate of climate change is climbing not falling. It is worse than ever. People are literally dying in the streets from excessive heat.

That's a fact. Facts matter.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

July 27, 2021

Capacity Changes, Capacity Utilization, Energy Production: Wind Power in California 2001-2020.

The source data from the table below can be found by scrolling down this page from the California Energy Commissions Web Page:

Electricity From Wind Energy Statistics and Data

It is the table labeled, Total Wind Production (Annual Totals; Excludes Imports)

I have imported the table into Excel, and then did some calculations using this data. Wind turbine power ratings, which are often cited by advocates of this form of energy which has failed spectacularly to address climate change after half a century of cheering, are cited as peak power, which is the maximal power the turbine would manage under perfect windy conditions, which in practice are never observed.

It is dishonest - not that anyone cares anymore about dishonesty - to represent a wind turbine, which is dependent on whims of weather as a plant that can, in theory run continuously at full power, such as a gas plant or a coal plant, or even a plant of a type that has been observed to run at 100% (or better) of capacity, something observed only in nuclear plants.

For example, one can find the capacity utilization of all of the nuclear reactors operating in the United States as of 2020 here: EIA Nuclear Energy Page by clicking on the 2020P Excel File in the table on the right. Of 94 nuclear reactors operating the in the United States in 2020, 70 operated at 90% capacity utilization or better, and of these, 24 operated at 100% of capacity or more. Five operated at capacity utilization of less than 80%. One of these was Diablo Canyon reactor #2, which operated at 74.8% of capacity, apparently for refueling and maintenance. It produced 7,348,123 MWh of electricity, or 26.5 PetaJoules of electricity (0.0265 EJ) in one small building. Diablo Canyon #2 operated at 90.4% capacity utilization, producing 8,910,575 MWh of electricity, or 32.1 PetaJoules, or (0.0321 EJ).

In the table below, I have included a theoretical amount of energy that wind turbines would produce if they operated at 100% of capacity utilization, using the SI unit of energy, the Joule. I have also converted the power actually produced from MWh to Joule in order to calculate the ratio of the latter to the former to give capacity utilization. I have then calculated the average continuous power of all the wind turbines in California, by the number of seconds in a sidereal year, 86400 seconds/day*365.24 days/year = 31,556,736 seconds. This gives the average power in Watts, but the spreadsheet divides this number by 1,000,000 to give a MW. Theoretically, ignoring the inherent lumpiness in wind power which produces what it produces without respect to demand, this gives a feel for the capacity of a nuclear powerplant that could produce more energy than all the wind turbines in California. The next two columns give the growth or decline in name plate capacity compared to the previous year, as well the growth or decline in actual energy produced by all the wind turbines in California. Where declines occur, this reflects the short life time of wind turbines and the failure to replace those decommissioned. Renewable energy advocates love "percent talk" and so, since I'm so familiar with their patois, I've put in "percent."

The table:




There you have it folks, the total energy, produced in two small buildings, in 2020 with a total in use footprint of about 12 acres, on a 700 acre plot of largely undisturbed marine chaparral, produced 16,258,698 MWh of electricity, or 58.5 petajoules of electrical energy, more than all of wind plants in California, distributed over thousands of square km.

For reference, as of 2019, humanity was producing and consuming on the entire planet was consuming about 600 ExaJoules (EJ) of energy, dominated by an increasing share of dangerous fossil fuels.

If there's any sense to shutting the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor, this when the entire West Coast is laced with fires, droughts, and extreme temperatures, I'm missing it.

From where I sit, anti-nukes are the exact equivalent of anti-vaxxers, inasmuch both assert arrogant ignorance to do harm.

Have a nice evening.

July 26, 2021

Even in Sacremento, Sacramento of all places, they're waking up.

While Nuclear Energy has proved to be, beginning in the 1990's, the cleanest reliable form of energy, and is the only one that can be scaled to eliminate dangerous fossil fuel use, there were a number of nuclear power plants that were operated poorly. Probably the worst operated nuclear reactor in the United States outside of Three Mile Island - which has long served as an inspiration for people to ignore the routine and massive death toll associated with fossil fuels - was the Rancho Seco Nuclear Reactor, operated by SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District.) The performance of this reactor was so bad, that its reliability was only slightly better than the very best wind parks in the world. In the period which it operated, from April 1975 to June 1989, when it was shut by public referendum, it's capacity utilization was less than 40%.

A former head of SMUD, David Freeman referred to nuclear energy as the "most expensive and dangerous source of energy on Earth."

This may be an indication of why Rancho Seco was so poorly run. Apparently SMUD was incapable of hiring senior engineering staff that could do math. It's rather absurd to call nuclear power the "most dangerous source of energy on Earth" when between six and seven million people die each year from air pollution, caused by combustion of dangerous fossil fuels. It appears that SMUD engineering supervisors can't count.

Freeman "replaced" the 913 MWe nuclear reactor with an 11 MWe solar farm that probably at best, meets recent solar capacity utilization in California, about 24%, meaning it's really, in terms of average continuous power, 3 MW at best. Then quietly, SMUD built a 600 MWe dangerous natural gas plant Cosumnes Power Plant, which has now operated for 17 years, spewing, without restriction the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide into the planetary atmosphere, where it causes droughts, fires, heat deaths, extreme weather, what have you and so on...

Given the hostility to nuclear power in California, and Sacramento in particular, it was somewhat surprising to read this editorial in the Sacremento Bee:

To fulfill promises of Diablo Canyon closure, California ignores fossil fuel emissions

Excerpts:

Don't worry, be happy, batteries, batteries, batteries.

Screw those cobalt digging slave children in the "Democratic" "Republic" of Congo, and don't pay attention to the source of all those ketones, or all those lithium mines. Screw the laws of thermodynamics.

It's a shame that the people at SMUD never hired competent engineers, since they helped give nuclear energy a largely undeserved bad name, giving anti-nukes, masters not of engineering, but masters of selective attention, all the more power to dig more dangerous natural gas, more wires to connect unreliable so called "renewable energy" facilities in order to cause more fires, more heat deaths, and faster climate change, all the time, in Trumpian scale mendacity, declaring themselves "green."

July 25, 2021

Astronomers push for global debate on giant satellite swarms

This is a news item in Nature: Astronomers push for global debate on giant satellite swarms (Alexandra Witze, Nature, News, July 16, 2021.)

I believe it may be open sourced and not behind a fire wall.

A rather disturbing, and in my ethical purview, obscene picture from the text:



Some excerpts from the text:

If anyone is familiar with my writings, I never hold back on my contempt for that ethical Lilliputian Elon Musk, who reminds me of characters in that paean to moral indifference, the appallingly dull book by that very dull woman Ayn Rand, in the dry and barely readable novel/treatise Atlas Shrugged.

He just throws his money around to do whatever the fuck he wants at the expense of the rest of humanity and wants to be worshipped for doing so.

I note that the same people who worship the hedonistic errant intellectual homunculus Donald Trump are also prone to worship the dullard narrow minded Ayn Rand.

This kind of disregard for the future of human vision has got to stop.

July 24, 2021

I was somehow inspired to get "The Big Lebowski" out of the library. I never saw it. Should...

...I actually watch it?

People have told me I should.

Would time spent otherwise be better used?

July 24, 2021

A racist scientist built a collection of human skulls. Should we still study them?

This a news item from a recent issue of Science: A racist scientist built a collection of human skulls. Should we still study them? (Lizzie Wade, Science July 8, 2018).

I'm not sure if it's open sourced. A pop up appeared, and I just logged in using my AAAS membership.

Some excerpts:

The article contains a quote from one of the three great Americans who started the all too slow process, obviously still uncompleted, of freeing the United States from virulent racism, at that time, in it's most vicious form, human slavery, Frederick Douglass. (The other two would be Lincoln and Grant, who defined their contributions in the political and military/political field, whereas Douglass defined it in the moral sphere.)



Interesting article, I think.

Have a nice weekend.

July 23, 2021

Hydrogen Production by Reforming of Sodium Alginate in the Liquid Phase over Pt/C Catalysts

The paper I'll discuss in this post is this one: Hydrogen Production by Reforming of Sodium Alginate in the Liquid Phase over Pt/C Catalyst (Vinayak N. Kalekar and Prakash D. Vaidya Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2021 60 (27), 9755-9763)

We have, as people paying attention have noted, a real problem with algae overgrowth, much of it connected with run off from agricultural and landscaping fertilizers, as well as climate change.

Whether at sea, as in the case of the now dead offshore Mississippi Delta region, once a rich source of seafood, the Red Tides of Florida, where rotting fish are piling up on the beaches or the the famous cases of microcystin in Lake Erie area which rendered the water supply of major cities toxic, these algae blooms kill by the following mechanism: The photosynthetic algae experience a burst of growth so thick that lower layers of the algae mats lose access to light and die. The dead algae sinks or rots in place. As a result bacteria multiply to feed on the dead algae, consuming oxygen at a level which makes it impossible for large organisms, like fish, or shellfish to survive. Everything then dies, pretty much.

In theory, this process might be stopped by removing the algae before it gets thick enough to kill lower layers, either by filtration, skimming, or similar mechanisms.

If this is done in a timely or continuous fashion, it can actually be a carbon negative approach, in particular when the carbon is recovered and put to use in carbon based materials such as alloys, certain polymers, carbon fibers, nanotubes, etc. Such use may allow for the displacement of the use of dangerous fossil fuels to the extent that they, notably dangerous petroleum and dangerous natural gas, but also albeit more limited, dangerous coal, are used to produce industrial chemicals.

This particular paper describes the utilization of water as an oxidant; however carbon dioxide oxidants may offer certain advantages in situations that I call "the reverse Allam cycle." A problem with biomass reforming is that it is wet, but if the drying is conducted at high temperatures, such as might be produced with nuclear energy, with a mixture of steam and carbon dioxide, "syn gas" - from which any petroleum commodity chemical (or its equivalent) can be made - with adjustable hydrogen to carbon oxide ratios reflecting the ultimate target for synthesis.

From the paper's introductory text:

The authors report the work of others using different approaches. In their work, they use a platinum catalyst supported on carbon. Platinum is an expensive and relatively rare element falling into the critical element category. Notably, they also discuss ruthenium and palladium catalysts. These elements may be more readily available to future generations inasmuch as they are constituents of used nuclear fuel, and thus access to them may not be strictly limited to ores.

From my perspective, a carbon support in a reforming system is less than ideal, and they do report some associated difficulty with catalyst degradation, but anyway, some pictures from the text:



The caption:



Characterization of the catalyst included the use of a scanning electron micscrope:



The caption:



The catalyst was noted to have significant porosity by use of imaging and BET (Brunauer–Emmett–Teller) nitrogen adsorption device, and the active sites characterized by ammonia desorption experiments.

Two tables from the paper touch on the efficacy of two elements other than platinum:



While the ruthenium and palladium experiments gave lower hydrogen yields, they were explored only at one temperature. Modern materials science gives access to higher temperatures. This would justify exploring the use of more readily available - over many generations - palladium and ruthenium catalysts, albeit on different supports than porous carbon.

As it is, the platinum catalyst loses activity, and various analytical techniques show the changes to unused catalysts by use:



The caption:



IR:



The caption:



X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy:



The caption:





The caption:



Ammonia desorption (TPD = "temperature programmed desorption) shows the loss of acidic sites on the catalyst upon use:



The caption:



Finally, reaction pathways leading to the products, mostly by decarboxylation reactions.:



The caption:



This is just one of many thousands, tens of thousands, of papers along these lines, the reforming of biomass. I mention it only as a signpost along the way for the reversing of climate change, turning a pollutant, algae, into a resource. The added benefit is the recovery of phosphate, which is decidedly not a renewable resource.

The paper's conclusion:



A fun little paper, not necessarily the best paper on this subject, but worth reading if one has the chance.

Have a pleasant Friday.

July 22, 2021

You do realize, don't you, you can access something called "data" for free?

No?

I do it all the time. Try it some time.

If one were to have a sense of honor, one might look at data before offering weakly trying to insult people who access and use data, but no matter. I've been studying energy seriously for more than 30 years in the primary scientific literature, and I am fully aware of people who are disinterested in facts. In fact, it's a popular thing these days, so much so, that my AAAS tee shirt had printed on it the tautological statement, "Facts are facts." That shouldn't be controversial, but it is.

For an example of readily available data, the CAISO supply page provides data for all the solar facilities in the State of California in real time in 5 minute increments. If one has not joined Greenpeace, and therefore is not excluded from being able to do mathematics, one could, if one gave a shit, do simple calculations using low level Excel formulas. If one is interested, one can readily calculate the capacity utilization of all the solar, and for that matter, all of the wind facilities in that gas dependent State, which is the largest producer of solar energy in the world.

One can choose any date, by using the dropdown menu in the upper right hand of any graphic, and download a CSV file of the actual data using the dropdown menu in the upper left hand menu.

The 2020 capacity of solar facilities in the State was 15,637.7 MW.

Many days, for example today, I download the CSV files for both so called "renewable energy" and total energy for the previous day which are available on the supply.

If one is not a handwaving fool who expects to make unsupported and unreferenced Pablum announcements thus demonstrating the Dunning Kruger effect being operative, one can use this data to support or refute one's statements using such data.

Of course, I could mimic Dr. Fauci's remark to Senator Paul in this context, but why bother?

The people who have lazily bet the future of humanity on their solar energy fantasies, piss me off, because their ignorance is destroying the future. We hit 420 ppm of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere because people are too lazy to open science books, or peruse data sites, many of which are freely available.

They're not worth the blood pressure spike to engage them, and they all end up on my ignore list. We have enough delusional people with whom we must deal in the Republican Party, and it is disheartening to see similarly delusional people in our Party. The flaws of one's own are always worse than external flaws.

Before I wish you a nice life, some data analysis, using simple Excel functions operated on the CSV files, from the 7/20/21 24 hour data available at the CAISO website:

In the entire State of California, over the 24 hour period of 7/20/21 the output of the "15,637.7 MW" of solar capacity varied between a high of 11,835 MW, observed in the 5 minute period beginning at 13:35 PDT (1:35 PM PDT), and a low of -50 MW, which represents the energy losses associated with powering the connectors when the solar cells are producing zero energy.

The number of five minute periods in the 288 data points in which the capacity utilization was 100% was zero. In fact, the number of 288 periods where all the solar plants supplying California were functioning at 90% of capacity utilization was zero. In fact, the number of 288 periods where all the solar plants supplying California were functioning at 80% of capacity utilization was zero. The number of 5 minute periods out of 288 where the capacity utilization was more than 70% is 47 representing 235 minutes, or a little under 4 hours of a 24 hour day. In fact, the number of 288 periods where all the solar plants supplying California were functioning less than 10% of capacity utilization was 139, representing 695 minutes, a shade under 12 hours.

The highest capacity utilization was at the aforementioned peak, 13:35 PDT (1:35 PM PDT) which was 75.80%. The standard deviation for all 288 five minute periods in the 24 hours was an enormous 31.0% (as measured in the percent talk that solar advocates use to misrepresent the "success" of their useless and expensive fantasy.)

This is the data for the whole damned State of California, plus solar imports from Arizona and Nevada.

Great job!

Have a nice life; I wish I could say I enjoyed this interaction, but I can't; nevertheless surely and thankfully, it will be the last between us.

July 18, 2021

Just picked a bowl of wild raspberries, and poured them on some vanilla ice cream

It's a sort of guilty pleasure to live where I live. I'm a suburban asshole with a car and lawn, although I detest both lawns and cars. When I first moved in, my neighbor, and older gentleman, an accomplished birder with a very long life list, now passed, stopped by and defined for me, a first time home owner, what was and what was not a "weed." "If you want it there, it's a plant," he said, "If you don't want it there, it's a 'weed.'"

I have lived by his wisdom since.

I have almost no weeds, only lots of kinds of mysterious plants, other than poison ivy, which I kill by burying it under clippings.

Some years ago, I either attended a lecture by or read an editorial by the former Editor of one of my favorite Scientific Journals, Environmental Science and Technology, Jerald L. Schnoor, in which he said that the common suburban practice that he found to be the most odious was applying fertilizers - phosphate is a non-renewable resource, and even it wasn't, fertilizer run-off is killing our fresh water reservoirs - to suburban lawns. Food is one thing, chemical lawns another. He's right.

So I don't fertilize my lawn.

I also don't use weed killers; I do mow all the species - there are a lot of them - except certain interesting flowers when they bloom, I wouldn't want to make my neighbors even more unhappy with me than they already are.

For the last for years, as they began to grow in from the surrounding woods, wild raspberry bushes began appearing in the middle of the yard, and all around the edges patches appearing in the middle of various places in the yard. They don't get mowed.

For the last few years, I've been harvesting them. They're small, and after a rain, incredibly delicious. There's about a three week period when they're available. It's always a competition with the birds; and they do get their share. You wait too long and "their share will be 100%, not counting the drop offs. We share. It's bird droppings that have spread these raspberry weeds.

We've had generous rains, and only a few instances of oppressive heat. After many years of spreading raspberry bushes, we have a bumper crop, the birds and I.

I harvested a bowl this afternoon. It's a good way, by the way, to appreciate what farm workers go through. A package the size of the bowl I picked would probably cost about $7 in a supermarket around here. It makes you appreciate what the wages must be.

Anyway...

I had a little vanilla ice cream that I smuggled in out of sight of my wife.

Wild raspberries and vanilla ice cream...

What good have I done to deserve this? Heaven in New Jersey!

Life is astoundingly beautiful and then you die.

July 18, 2021

UK's First Gas-Fired Allam Cycle Power Plant Taking Shape

This is a news item from Power magazine, to which I have a free subscription, owing to my interest in trends in engineering the electrical grid: UK’s First Gas-Fired Allam Cycle Power Plant Taking Shape

Let me preface my remarks by clearly stating, that in my view, 100% of "let's build carbon dioxide dumps" (sequestration) are unsustainable lipstick on the dangerous fossil fuel pig, just as wind power and solar power are unsustainable lipstick on the the dangerous natural gas pig.

This news item involving the Allam cycle, in which I've had considerable interest in a highly modified form that I call "the reverse Allam cycle," is involved in the unsustainable fantasy of building carbon dioxide dumps the consequences of which will fall on future generations.

The Allam cycle, as generally described, is essentially an oxyfuel combustion cycle designed to convert dangerous natural gas into a pure stream of carbon dioxide. Pure streams of carbon dioxide may have seriously important industrial uses, and there are many reasons that having them is desirable, but obtaining such a waste stream from a dangerous fossil fuel, any dangerous fossil fuel is in my view a crime against all future generations, and in fact, all living things.

From the news item:

A picture from the news item:



It's probably open sourced, so anyone interested can read the whole news item herself or himself.

Oxyfuel combustion that does not involve separation of oxygen from air, either by membrane, pressure swing or other energy wasting schemes, would be available as a side product of thermochemical water splitting, and as such, might produce very pure carbon dioxide streams associated with the combustion of say, waste biomass.

A reverse Allam cycle would use carbon dioxide, rather than oxygen, as the oxidant. This would also produce enormous environmental benefits in a case where a future generation chooses to clean up, via what would essentially amount to air capture, after the waste produced by our generation and dumped indiscriminately into one of our favorite waste dumps, the planetary atmosphere, while we all waited, like Godot, for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here, and won't come.

I trust you're having a nice weekend.