More fuel for thought

"Dudley Henriques" wrote:

I'm FAR from being any kind of an expert on these matters, but I can't
help but wonder, considering the fact that the world's economies are so
completely dependent on oil for survival, that the world has waited WAY
too long on this issue and that we have already passed the point where the
changes necessary and either implemented or discovered, can no longer be
made in time to make any difference in the inevitable outcome;
......a self made dooms day scenario so to speak.

Oil is $110/bbl and climbing. Gasoline is on a similar path. Those facts
alone are already starting to give serious economic impetus to alternative
energy development.

Yeah, there's going to be pain, but watch the good ol' profit motive produce
its usual surprising results in wind, solar thermal, PV, biodiesel, etc.

--
Dan

"The future has actually been here for a while, it's just not readily
available to everyone."
- some guy at MIT

Andrew Sarangan wrote:


Even if we discover some large oil reserve, it is only going to
prolong the eventual demise of oil.



Which a Brazilian Oil just happen to do the other day. The 3rd largest
field ever found. I wonder how many other 1st, 2nd or 3rd largest oil
fields are out there waiting to be found? Including those that we are
pretty sure exist but are to deep for our current technology to make use of.

While I agree that alternate forms of energy are a very good thing for
very many reasons there is no reason to do anything at this point that
will trash the world economy because there is still several metric
butt-loads of crude out there.

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
On Apr 14, 11:00 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
If I am not mistaken, current world consumption is about 85 million
barrels per day. The 4 billion barrels will last 50 days. I don't
understand the reason for celebration.

When you're addicted to something, even a tiny amount is cause for
celebration.

Whether it's 4 billion, or 400 billion barrels -- who cares? It's *ours*.

Develop those fields now, and it's *that* much less oil we have to import
from the Arabs. This is what's called a "good thing" no matter how you cut
it.
--

There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's
wing that we are simply throwing away.

Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing
area on a C-172.

30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight.

The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it.
But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not
achievable.

You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world?

There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't:

Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency.

Cure cancer.

Produce sustainable fusion.

Convert junk mail and coffee grounds into 100 LL.


--
Jim Pennino

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Dan Luke wrote:
......a self made dooms day scenario so to speak.

Oil is $110/bbl and climbing. Gasoline is on a similar path. Those facts
alone are already starting to give serious economic impetus to alternative
energy development.


Oil is at an all time high because the dollar is at an all time low. All
the money both foreign and domestic is moving into hard commodities.
Gold and oil just happen to be the most popular two. If the dollar
wasn't in the hole so badly the resent find off the coast of Brazil
would have really depressed the oil futures market.

Alan wrote:
In article Stella Starr writes:

Eh. I lived around there, had friends who went off to work in the North
Dakota oil fields a time or two. Every time petroleum goes through the
roof in price, someone reopens the oil shale fields, which require an
astronomical amount of work and expenditure to wring oil from the rock.

Back when oil was getting close to $30/barrel, an article on cnn.com
commented that there was a huge amount of oil in oil shale, but it would
not be economical to extract unless oil got to $40/barrel. Well, at $100
per barrel, it seems that the oil companies are hoping for even more profit
when they finally decide to get it.

Two things have happened:

The cost of extraction from oil shale and tar sands (both of which have
enormous amounts of oil) has gone up along with everything else. Current
costs are estimated to be in the $80 to $100 per barrel range.

Since a long term, large capital investment is required to do this, the
oil companies waited to make sure the price was above, and going to stay
above, the level where recovery was economical.

Recovery from such sources is starting now, but in some places is being
hindered by the NIMBY's and CO2 fanatics.


--
Jim Pennino

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Bob Fry wrote:
"P" == Private writes:

P I just found this on another forum, facts not verified, no
P commentary made. Huge Dakota oil pool could change energy
P climate debate

Then let's get some facts. The USGS just released a new assessment of
the Bakken.

"3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in
North Dakota and Montana's Bakken Formation--25 Times More Than 1995
Estimate"

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation.

Apparently the Bakken formation has been known for decades, but its
potential usable oil estimates not so well known.

And the technically recoverable percentage increases continually with
advancements in the technology.

--
Jim Pennino

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On Apr 15, 12:55 pm, wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
On Apr 14, 11:00 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
If I am not mistaken, current world consumption is about 85 million
barrels per day. The 4 billion barrels will last 50 days. I don't
understand the reason for celebration.

When you're addicted to something, even a tiny amount is cause for
celebration.

Whether it's 4 billion, or 400 billion barrels -- who cares? It's *ours*.

Develop those fields now, and it's *that* much less oil we have to import
from the Arabs. This is what's called a "good thing" no matter how you cut
it.
--
There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's
wing that we are simply throwing away.

Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing
area on a C-172.

30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight.


On a clear day, the average solar power incident on the earth's
surface is 1400Wm^2. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/...utbundit.shtml

That gives 22kW or 30 HP.

Regardless of the exact number, the point is that there is significant
amount of solar radiation that we are not making use of.




The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it.
But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not
achievable.

You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world?

Yes, we have lots of ways to to do it, but we have not figured out how
to do that in a cost-effective manner that can be made for mass use.


There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't:

Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency.

We are already doing it, for specialized applications. Internal
quantum efficiencies of certain semiconductor materials have
approached nearly 100% within a narrow spectral range.The challenge is
how to translate that to match the broad solar spectrum. The know-how
exists, but there isn't enough investment to make it happen.

Had we spent all the post-911 terrorist-aversion expenditures on
something like this, we could be declaring independence from the
middle east.

I know that we spent several millions erecting a metal fence around
our small GA airport. All it did was screw up the localizer signal and
trap the deer population. I don't think even the administrators
believed there was a terrorism threat here.

On the other hand, NSF (National Science Foundation) budget has barely
kept up with inflation in the past 10 years. This is where we count on
for fundamental break throughs in discovery.




Cure cancer.

Produce sustainable fusion.

Convert junk mail and coffee grounds into 100 LL.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

On Apr 15, 11:52*am, Gig 601Xl Builder
wrote:

While I agree that alternate forms of energy are a very good thing for
very many reasons there is no reason to do anything at this point that
will trash the world economy because there is still several metric
butt-loads of crude out there.

I don't know of anyone who is suggesting that we trash the world
economy. But I think now is the time to devote some serious resources
to find alternative, sustainable ways to keep our societies running.
If we wait until the end is clearly in sight, we probably won't be
able to afford to spend the resources it will take to solve the
problem.

If you want to get some good perspective on this kind of thing, read
the book Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's a very clear-eyed, down-to-
earth analysis of why past societies have flourished, but then
ultimately collapsed. Over and over again in human history, societies
have over-used their natural resources until they suffered a
catastrophic collapse. This is the rule, not the exception. It is
very rare in human history for a society to live in a way that is
sustainable over the long term. Clearly, our current society is not
sustainable, and if we ignore history we will be condemned to repeat
it.

Phil

wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's
wing that we are simply throwing away.

Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing
area on a C-172.

At ~1000W/m^2 insolation, that yields an "ideal" max power of ~16,000 W.

30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight.

Since there are ~746 W/HP, by my reckoning the sunlight power on a C-172
wing is ~21 HP. Still not bad, though not sure where Andrew got 30 HP.

The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it.
But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not
achievable.

You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world?

There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't:

Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency.

Real world system efficiencies of 40% should be possible today - using
solar thermal (e.g. solar troughs).

Cure cancer.

That is already being done for some forms of cancer. Next time try "Cure
the common cold." (And strictly speaking the body does that on its own - it
just makes you feel miserable while it goes about it!)

Produce sustainable fusion.

Always 30 years off.... ;-)

Convert junk mail and coffee grounds into 100 LL.

An interesting idea. :-)

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
On Apr 15, 12:55 pm, wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
On Apr 14, 11:00 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
If I am not mistaken, current world consumption is about 85 million
barrels per day. The 4 billion barrels will last 50 days. I don't
understand the reason for celebration.

When you're addicted to something, even a tiny amount is cause for
celebration.

Whether it's 4 billion, or 400 billion barrels -- who cares? It's *ours*.

Develop those fields now, and it's *that* much less oil we have to import
from the Arabs. This is what's called a "good thing" no matter how you cut
it.
--
There is 30 horsepower of solar radiation falling on a Cessna 172's
wing that we are simply throwing away.

Unless I dropped a decimal somewhere, there is about 16 M^2 of wing
area on a C-172.

30 HP is 22.4 kW; there isn't that much energy in sunlight.


On a clear day, the average solar power incident on the earth's
surface is 1400Wm^2. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/...utbundit.shtml

That gives 22kW or 30 HP.

Only if the angle between your collecting surface is 90 degrees with
respect to the incident sunlight.

Otherwise, multiply by the sine of the angle.

So, if you are at Latitude 33 degrees north at noon in the middle of
the summer, that angle is roughly 57 degrees and you get .84 times
that, or roughly 18.5 kW for level flight.

The sun moves at about 15 degrees per hour, so an hour later or earlier
that angle is roughly 43 degrees and you are down to about 15 kW.

I'll leave the calculation of what you get at other times of the
year when the sun is low.

The only way around this is to always fly with your wings perpendicular
to the sun.

Regardless of the exact number, the point is that there is significant
amount of solar radiation that we are not making use of.

Not from airplane wings there isn't.


The challenge is extracting the full solar spectrum and storing it.
But there are no fundamental scientific reasons why this is not
achievable.

You mean other than we haven't a clue how to do it in the real world?

Yes, we have lots of ways to to do it, but we have not figured out how
to do that in a cost-effective manner that can be made for mass use.

We do not know how to do it even in a lab.

There are no fundamental scientific reasons why we can't:

Convert light into electricity with 90% efficiency.

We are already doing it, for specialized applications. Internal
quantum efficiencies of certain semiconductor materials have
approached nearly 100% within a narrow spectral range.The challenge is
how to translate that to match the broad solar spectrum. The know-how
exists, but there isn't enough investment to make it happen.

The best efficiency achieved in a lab to date is around 40% of the
total incident energy of the sun's spectrum.

Had we spent all the post-911 terrorist-aversion expenditures on
something like this, we could be declaring independence from the
middle east.

Electricity has little to nothing to do with oil from the Middle
East or anywhere else and never will unless either batteries are
improved by an order of magnitude or electricity becomes cheap
enough to synthesize oil at a cost comperable with sucking it out
of the ground and refining it.

--
Jim Pennino

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