|
Posting new ideas to the internet - even if they
are "green" probably has some ultimate value, even if one must consume bandwidth
in a continuing effort to improve or firm-up a previous suggestion. I
suppose that by now, anyone on vortex who is tiring of a particular thread knows
where their "delete" key is located, so this apology will be short. If the "intent" expressed in this post - which is the
presentation of an alternative route to energy self-sufficiency for the coming
decade - reaches the attention of only one policy-maker, present or future, then
it will be considered a worthwhile effort.
The basic premise is that the Uncle Sam had been placed "over a barrel" by world events, oil gluttony, and a petrocracy which has not considered all the available options of energy self-sufficiency. We can explore these options to find the "better" of all the many unsatisfactory solutions, or we can curtail personal mobility, or we can continue on the same dead-end path to destruction by squandering resources in a futile war - and lost-lives in a part of the world where we have no business interfering. Today Sec. Rice says that we may still be in Iraq in 10 years. Totally unacceptable, as long as there are alternatives. There are about 50,000 square miles of unused wetland and shallow river bottom in the lower Amazon which is not forested now. This is the equivalent to the average size of an Eastern US state. It can be incredibly productive and is of course frost-free and continually irrigated. This land will never be reforested back to its former grandeur. It is truly sad and regrettable that it has previously been deforested for simply the timber, which was sold for a pittance - and sadder yet that the land is unproductive for most kinds of agriculture because there is no cheap fertilizer available there. Can one turn this "lemon" into lemonade? Yes. We can partially cure both problems by making the land suitable for
renewable intensive agriculture by building a substantial number of nuclear
powered fertilizer factories and bringing this land back to productive use for
growing biomass to be used for a liquid transportation fuel, ... all this to get
us from over the Arab's "barrel," and out of the Islamic cross-hairs fro world
terrorism.
Sure we can ignore this huge undeveloped resource, which would capable of replacing all imported Arab oil, or at least 5 quads of it. And if properly handled, the land would gradually become more fertile - not less - and hopefully in a decade there will be energy alternatives and the land can be converted to food production... but of course, we can also continue blindly on with the status quo - the only question now is should this redevelopment of available land for the purpose of energy-sustainability be ignored because it was "formerly" rain-forest? There are political realities involved with nuclear energy for Brazil which will keep American built reactors from having any chance of being competitive there, but other countries can step in using a variant of our technology. The Brazilians would embrace this - as it is all gravy for them in the long-term and there will remain another 100,000 square miles of real rain-forest to protect, if they so desire. This is all part of the coming hydrogen economy, but there is a difference
- in that instead of trying to store and burn hydrogen, which is not easy to
store, we use the hydrogen to make ammonia - NH3- and use ammonium
compounds to fertilize poor land for biomass to be used for ethanol. This way we
can "multiply" the energy content available in the hydrogen may fold PLUS at the
same time have a liquid fuel which can be used in ICE auto engines PLUS improve
the land for latter use by Brazil - assuming we do come up with high-tech
options within the coming decade.
The bottom line is that if you have a gigawatt thermal nuclear plant - you might use that for 500 megawatt equivalents of hydrogen gas OR instead, multiply that by going to a more complex system of hydrogen --> ammonia --> fertilizer --> ethanol with the aim of getting 5 gigawatt-equivalents of ethanol from the hydrogen. The idea of using a smaller capacity fission plant in tandem with a combined fertilizer plant, fermentation plant, and an ethanol distillation unit seems imminently doable at first glance without any breakthrough in technology required. This would be especially useful as floating factories, anchored in a freshwater delta area such as the Amazon, where harvesting can be done by barge. Hydrogen from nuclear energy (or wind) is the key to this but we must get away from hydrogen from fossil fuel. As of 2004, about 50 million metric tons of hydrogen are produced each year, increasing at 15% annually. About half of worldwide hydrogen production is used to produce ammonia-based fertilizers, and most of the rest is used in oil refineries. 48% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas, 30% is from oil, and 18% is from coal. Electrolysis accounts for about 4%, because electrolysis only makes sense when the cost of electricity is lower than the cost of the hydrocarbon fuel that could produce that electricity. A massive increase in hydrogen production (via electrolysis) is
neither feasible nor needed since two distinct new direct nuclear
thermocehmical routes to hydrogen are now available, either of which
will give about double the energy-output of hydrogen via
electrolysis.
'Fonly....as they say (if only).
'Fonly there were American-style entrepreneurs in Brazil who could
pull this off. I can see from the response of Vortexians that there is way too
much built-in hostility to a US company trying to do it here or there... OTOH
there is always Cargill...
Jones
|
