[Vo]:URL addr: Additional Kiplinger info on the North Dakota black gold rush
http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/The_U.S._Poised_to_hit_New_Oil_Gusher_080317.html or http://tinyurl.com/yqbgcd -- Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
[Vo]:Scaramuzzi paper
Scaramuzzi, F., Gas loading of deuterium in palladium at low temperature. J. Alloys and Compounds, 2004. 385: p. 19. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Scaramuzzigasloading.pdf - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Nanosolar efficiency 9-10%, installed cost $3/W
- Original Message From: Michel Jullian 9 to 10% efficiency for Nanosolar's current production (they target 15% ultimately). Installed cost of 1MW German plant panels $3/W ... Well, they will tell you almost anything when, as this Company president was telling potential investors, it needs to raise $100 million in private equity ... ... and in a field which is already over-crowded; and in which the raw materials issues (indium? gallium?) have not been solved; and which raw materials problems are conspicuously absent from mention ... like Cervantes, I smell another rat - of the 'promise them anything' variety, especially since: In 2003, the price of indium was less than $100 per kg. which is not cheap (and you will see a price in that range mentioned by some of these high-flying thin-film companies trying to lure investors). Lately, the surge in demand for indium due to LCD computer and TV screens, has resulted in a price which broke through the $1,000/kg level and is still on the rise. There is only a limited supply. IOW - demand for indium will continue to increase if thin film solar technology gets into production. The best solution for using solar is probably algae (aquaculture). Billions of years of evolution has taught those little buggers a thing or two about converting sunlight into storable energy efficiently. The next best solution may involve titania - TiO2 - which is a common ceramic produced in largequantities, which is a factor of well over 100 times cheaper than indium will ever be. Itis used as the white pigment in house paint, for instance. Anyway, perhaps a decent solution for using thin film or printed solar cells would involve the following implementation of the *cheaper semiconductor* approach, which is the cell being immersed in water, and with the advantage of a storable form of energy, like H2. http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9894373-54.html?tag=nefd.top : ... if nothing else, it takes a lot less money to develop this technology. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/solar-hydrogen.html http://www.nanoptek.com/ I really hate to see good money from conscientious investors being poured into this kind of dead-end technology, which can be made to look pretty in a slide-show, but when far better solutions for that capital exist now.
Re: [Vo]:Nanosolar efficiency 9-10%, installed cost $3/W
Michel Jullian wrote: 9 to 10% efficiency for Nanosolar's current production (they target 15% ultimately). Installed cost of 1MW German plant panels $3/W. If they really can achieve $3/W, perhaps despite the problems described by Jones Beene, than this would be a remarkable breakthrough. This is $3000 / kW which is cheaper than wind turbines, nuclear or hydroelectricity. I think only gas and coal have cheaper installation costs, and of course they require fuel over the life of the plant. A higher percent of efficiency improves the cost per watt, but other than that it doesn't matter. In other words, it would be better to make it 5% efficient for $200 per square meter than 10% efficient for $500. For most applications, you can always take up more space. (There are some apps, such as roadside collectors, in which a small, compact collector is an advantage.) To put it another way, collection space is usually cheaper than the cost premium for higher efficiency. At least that's how it worked out a few years ago when I checked the numbers. Ed Storms first pointed this out -- on this forum, I think. Another critical issue with PV is how quickly they degrade over time. Many years ago, the half-life was something like 5 or 10 years as I recall, and the energy payback time for some types was infinity. That is to say, they never generated as much energy as it took to fabricate them. They were useful only as a sort of storage battery that you could deploy to a remote location. You can think of it as transferring energy from the factory to the remote site. I think the energy payback time has improved considerably. PV is still growing by leaps and bounds in Japan. Here is a solar-thermal plant installed in Arizona last year, for $6,000 / kW of capacity, which is a promising number: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=44696 - Jed
[Vo]:Capital and operating costs for different generator types
Here is document from 2005 that seems authoritative: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=35854 It is summarized here, in slides made by the same author, who is at Merrill Lynch: http://www.des.state.nh.us/coastal/documents/EnergyCostComparisons.pdf I think the numbers for the capital cost of wind and nuclear power are much too low, but otherwise it seems to be in the ballpark. My summary of data from the two documents: Solar PV: Capital cost: $6 - $10 / W; $6,000 - $10,000 / kW Capacity factor: 15% - 20% Fuel cost: $0 Health costs: $0 Total cost including maintenance etc.: 17.12 cents per kWh Coal: Capital cost: $1,200 / kW Capacity factor: 95% Fuel cost: 2.14 cents per kWh Health costs: ~5.36 cents per kWh Total cost including maintenance etc.: 10.29 cents per kWh Gas: Capital cost: $700 / kW Capacity factor: 95% Fuel cost: 4.90 cents per kWh Health costs: ~2 cents per kWh Total cost including maintenance etc.: 8.09 cents per kWh Nuclear: Capital cost: $1,500 / kW Capacity factor: 95% Fuel cost: 0.76 cents per kWh Health costs: ~0 cents per kWh but who knows . . . Total cost including maintenance etc.: ~3.31 cents per kWh according to the industry Wind: Capital cost: $1,500 / kW Capacity factor: 25% - 35% Fuel cost: $0 Health costs: $0 Total cost including maintenance etc.: 6 - 7 cents per kWh in New England. Wind industry sources say wind costs 3.5 to 4 cents per kWh, presumably in ideal locations such as North Dakota. New England is not ideal. See, for example, the GE Energy web site: http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge_wind_energy/en/about_wind_ener.htm - Jed
[Vo]:Re: Nanosolar efficiency 9-10%, installed cost $3/W
I agree cost per watt matters more than eficiency, with the type of use they are promoting (utility scale plants on low cost land outside cities, their first installation in Germany is on a reclaimed landfill). They claim an energy payback time of a few months, and a lifetime of decades. Of course, all we know for now is what they claim, which may or may not be accurate. If it is, it is quite good indeed. Jones's concern about the price and availability of indium and gallium should be temperated by the fact that the amount required per watt is very small. An estimation was posted here some time ago, IIRC it concluded this was not a problem. If it was, I guess not so many manufacturers would jump on the CIGS bandwagon, or the LCD screen bandwagon for that matter. Which doesn't mean there are no better possible clean energy solutions than CIGS PV of course. Michel - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 10:29 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Nanosolar efficiency 9-10%, installed cost $3/W Michel Jullian wrote: 9 to 10% efficiency for Nanosolar's current production (they target 15% ultimately). Installed cost of 1MW German plant panels $3/W. If they really can achieve $3/W, perhaps despite the problems described by Jones Beene, than this would be a remarkable breakthrough. This is $3000 / kW which is cheaper than wind turbines, nuclear or hydroelectricity. I think only gas and coal have cheaper installation costs, and of course they require fuel over the life of the plant. A higher percent of efficiency improves the cost per watt, but other than that it doesn't matter. In other words, it would be better to make it 5% efficient for $200 per square meter than 10% efficient for $500. For most applications, you can always take up more space. (There are some apps, such as roadside collectors, in which a small, compact collector is an advantage.) To put it another way, collection space is usually cheaper than the cost premium for higher efficiency. At least that's how it worked out a few years ago when I checked the numbers. Ed Storms first pointed this out -- on this forum, I think. Another critical issue with PV is how quickly they degrade over time. Many years ago, the half-life was something like 5 or 10 years as I recall, and the energy payback time for some types was infinity. That is to say, they never generated as much energy as it took to fabricate them. They were useful only as a sort of storage battery that you could deploy to a remote location. You can think of it as transferring energy from the factory to the remote site. I think the energy payback time has improved considerably. PV is still growing by leaps and bounds in Japan. Here is a solar-thermal plant installed in Arizona last year, for $6,000 / kW of capacity, which is a promising number: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=44696 - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Nanosolar efficiency 9-10%, installed cost $3/W
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:29:24 -0400: Hi, [snip] Michel Jullian wrote: 9 to 10% efficiency for Nanosolar's current production (they target 15% ultimately). Installed cost of 1MW German plant panels $3/W. If they really can achieve $3/W, perhaps despite the problems described by Jones Beene, than this would be a remarkable breakthrough. This is $3000 / kW which is cheaper than wind turbines, nuclear or hydroelectricity. I think only gas and coal have cheaper installation costs, and of course they require fuel over the life of the plant. [snip] Note that like wind turbines, installed capacity doesn't mean that it's available 24 hours a day (whereas for e.g. coal that is (almost) the case). You have to divide by 2 to get real maximum capacity, and this assumes both that the array tracks the Sun, and that there are never any clouds. Actually it's a little more than 2, because the atmosphere is thicker at dawn and dusk, which filters out more light. If it doesn't track the Sun, then you have to divide by Pi (approx.) in the tropics, or by 4 if you average over the whole surface of the planet. This is what the manufacturers are not advertising. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
Re: [Vo]:Capital and operating costs for different generator types
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:15:54 -0400: Hi, [snip] Coal: Capital cost: $1,200 / kW Capacity factor: 95% Fuel cost: 2.14 cents per kWh Health costs: ~5.36 cents per kWh Total cost including maintenance etc.: 10.29 cents per kWh Gas: Capital cost: $700 / kW Capacity factor: 95% Fuel cost: 4.90 cents per kWh Health costs: ~2 cents per kWh Total cost including maintenance etc.: 8.09 cents per kWh I suspect that neither of these take the eventual costs associated with global warming into account. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
[Vo]:carbon capture
PCS Competitor Newswire News Source: IEEE Spectrum News Date: 03/13/2008 06:02 PM Keywords: Competitors: Other Companies: Alstom Country: USA Product: CO2 Capture Carbon Capture Starts From Coal -Plant Advances in Lab 13 March 2008—Last week, a power plant operated by Milwaukee-based We Energies became the first to begin capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide from its exhaust with the sole purpose of keeping the planet-warming gas out of the atmosphere. It uses a new chilled-ammonia technology developed by French power equipment company Alstom Power. But successor technologies have recently emerged that could make scrubbing carbon dioxide from smokestacks (the most expensive part of the process) much cheaper. In the past few weeks, research groups have reported of materials that can accumulate enormous volumes of carbon dioxide on their surfaces and can also be easily reused. Carbon capture and sequestration involves absorbing the carbon dioxide in the plant’s exhaust, separating the carbon dioxide from the captured material—so the sorbent can be reused—and finally, compressing the gas and storing it. Right now, the first step, capturing carbon, makes up three-fourths of the total cost. The current state-of-the-art materials for soaking carbon dioxide, borrowed from the chemical industry, are amine-water solutions. Amines quickly absorb carbon dioxide, but separating the carbon dioxide from the amine requires a great deal of heat. “That heat comes primarily from steam that the plant would normally use to drive the turbine to produce electricity,” says Thomas Feeley, a technology manager at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), in Pittsburgh. The final step, compressing the gas after it’s removed, requires electricity. Together, capturing and compressing carbon dioxide using amines can nearly double the price of the electricity a plant produces from 4.9 U.S. cents to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to an NETL study. “We’ve seen that 30 to 40 percent of plant-generating capacity goes to operating carbon dioxide capture,” Feeley says. Alstom’s chilled-ammonia process should, by contrast, use about 10 percent of a plant’s output power, according to preliminary studies by the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute. In the process, the flue gas is first cooled to about 5 ºC, which increases carbon dioxide concentration and condenses the water out of the flue gas. The water is removed along with other contaminants such as sulfur dioxide. The remaining flue gas is nearly pure CO2, which can be easily absorbed by the ammonia. But it’s the next step that really saves energy. “Amines require a lot of high-quality steam to strip [carbon dioxide],” says Alstom’s Robert Hilton. In contrast, “ammonia doesn’t absorb the carbon dioxide quickly but gives it up easily.” So the Alstom process needs less heat and “can use waste heat from the power plant,” Hilton says. The company’s pilot demonstration in Wisconsin is small—the process will capture less than 1 percent of the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions, about 18 000 metric tons a year. By the end of 2008, the company plans to install a larger commercial-scale system that will trap and sequester 100 000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year at American Electric Power’s 1300-megawatt plant in New Haven, W.Va. Feeley says that chilled ammonia is among a handful of technologies that “ are some of the more promising approaches to capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.” The NETL is studying ammonia capture along with solid adsorbents, which accumulate carbon dioxide on their surfaces. These include solid amine–based adsorbents and porous crystalline materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Researchers have recently reported advances in both of these materials. In the 15 February issue of Science, UCLA researchers led by chemist Omar Yaghi described MOF-related materials that can hold 80 times their volume of carbon dioxide. These materials are extremely porous and have large surfaces where carbon dioxide molecules can attach. Moreover, they release carbon dioxide with a small pressure change, a key advantage since it should not require much energy. The other advance builds on conventional amine technology. Georgia Tech researchers have made solid-amine adsorbents by attaching amine polymers to a silica substrate. The material, presented in an online report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on 19 February, soaks five times as much carbon dioxide as currently available solid adsorbents. Making it is an easy one-step process—the researchers mix the silica materials and the polymer precursor with a catalyst at room temperature. Amine solutions are already known to be good carbon dioxide scrubbers, says chemical and biomolecular
Re: [Vo]:Nanosolar efficiency 9-10%, installed cost $3/W
Jones wrote, The best solution for using solar is probably algae (aquaculture). Billions of years of evolution has taught those little buggers a thing or two about converting sunlight into storable energy efficiently. Sure is Jones. Consider a municipal wastewater treatment plant is a liquid fertilizer plant on a massive scale. Biological reduction plants each have their own culture adapted to the plant to improve efficency. Some of these cultures are unbelievable in action, having been carefully nurtured. Major US cities can have several huge plants, some massive, capable of treating a billion gallons of wastewater per day. For some years we have watched this resource going down the toilet. The problem is compounded because the existing treating processes still allows compounds to enter the nation's streams including drugs, hormones etc. Combining treating process with aquaculture makes sense. The most efficent process remains the smaller lagoon systems where ponds are used for cascading the process downhill until the final pond effluent is ready to return to nature. A type of bamboo can grow in this culture at the rate of a foot or more per day. The root systems on these bamboo species are unreal and near perfect filters. Richard
